Namesake of a Neighborhood

Miss Marion Dunham

Sixth grade students with their teacher, Marion Dunham.

Cutter’s Grove, Thompson Riverview Terrace, Morningside addition – each neighborhood gets a name when it is first platted. Sometimes these names have a hidden history. Anoka’s Dunham Oaks neighborhood lies just north of the County Fair Grounds. The neighborhood came together because of one teacher and principal at Washington Elementary: Marion Dunham.

Born in 1894, Marion Dunham lived her entire life in the city of Anoka. She attended Anoka High School and studied in the “Normal Training Department.” Normal Training was a preparatory program for those students who wanted to become teachers. Students spent half of the school day learning grade subjects from a teacher’s view point that included music, drawing, American literature, civics, school law, hygiene, and agriculture. The other half was devoted to practical application and practice teaching in the local city schools.

Marion graduated with a first grade teaching certificate in 1912 at the age of 18 and by 1927 she taught sixth grade at Washington Elementary in the city of Anoka. She eventually became its Principal and remained in that position until she retired in 1963 at the age of 69.

Past students remembered Miss Dunham as “a force” in the halls of the school.

“She was a disciplinarian,” said one student in Miss Dunham’s eighth grade class. “She demanded and got respect and no one escaped homework.”

Another student, Barb Thurston, had Miss Dunham as her Principal at Washington and remembered her as a tiny woman, always dressed in black with sensible heels clicking down the hallways.

Miss Dunham could not purchase the land that became Dunham Oaks Neighborhood herself with a teacher’s salary and census records do not indicate that she had any supplementary income. She must have inherited the land from its previous owner, W.S. Bailey.

Wendell Bailey was Marion’s uncle, and he lived as a lodger in Marion’s home at 5th Avenue according to the 1940 census. On November 24, 1940 Wendell passed away and the Anoka Union reported on the circumstances surrounding his death: “Mr. Bailey had been taking care of a wolf for someone at his place beyond the fair grounds and wanted to take a picture of the animal when the light was just right…he asked his niece, Miss Marian [sic] Dunham, to accompany him and take the picture.” The photograph with the wolf went without incident, but after caging the animal again, Bailey suffered from a heart attack and died.

After his death, the land “north of the fairgrounds” transferred to Marion and her mother, Ruth Dunham. It wasn’t until after Ruth’s death in 1966 that Marion set about to sell parcels for developing a new neighborhood.

Marion sold the sections of her land carefully. She screened potential homeowners, and favored teachers and educators in the area. She also approved any home designs and designated what trees could and could not be torn down during construction. A resident of the neighborhood remembers as a child that Miss Dunham would often drive the streets, her head barely clearing the steering wheel of her 1960’s era Chrysler Imperial making sure all was in order. Her investment in the neighborhood created a haven away from the busier downtown Anoka streets.

Marion Dunham died at the Twin Rivers Care Center in Anoka on June 2, 1981, and was buried at Oakwood Cemetery next to her mother. With no direct children of her own, she was survived by her niece and grandnieces, none of whom lived near Anoka, as well as the neighborhood she created and planned and which still bears her name: Dunham Oaks.