"Let it be remembered," wrote Thomas Sharp in 1718, "That upon the nineteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and eighty-one, Mark Newby, William Bates, Thomas Thackara, George Goldsmith and Thomas Sharp set sail from the harbor...of Dublin...We took our land in tract together...bounding in the forks of Newton Creek and so over to Cooper's Creek..." Sharp's narrative account of the first permanent European settlement in what is today West Collingswood is the most accurate history of the establishment of Camden County.Many of the early settlers in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century West Jersey (modern-day South Jersey) were like the Newton Colony people. Quakers, members of the Society of Friends, were persecuted in England for their religious beliefs and way of life. They came, lured by the Concessions and Agreements, a document written in 1677 by proprietors such as William Penn, who owned a large portion of the land in West Jersey and wished to encourage Quaker settlement in the area. The settlement offered the promise of religious freedom, equitable taxation, and representative government.

The Esterbrook Pen and New York Ship Building companies had established themselves in Camden before World War I. By then a popular saying was, "On Camden's supplies, the world relies." Immigrant labor seeking economic opportunity helped increase the city population, providing a welcome source of abundant and cheap labor for the many industries that sprung up. Cigars, sausages, patent drugs, leather goods, iron products, ships, linoleum, carriage bodies, gas mantles, and terra cotta items were among the hundreds of products manufactured in the county.In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge dedicated the Delaware River Bridge, later renamed for Benjamin Franklin. It opened the way for commuters to work in Philadelphia and live in the Camden suburbs. A second bridge, the Walt Whitman, opened 31 years later, connecting Philadelphia and Gloucester City. In 1976, the Betsy Ross Bridge, linking Philadelphia and Pennsauken, opened to traffic.

These routes and the development of high-speed rail transportation between Camden and Philadelphia helped to push the county's population over the half-million mark. This, combined with a broad economic and industrial base, several centers for higher education, three major hospitals, and an excellent interstate road system and connections, offer a bright future for the county.