Friday, August 17, 2007

Funny place names: Buttzville, NJ

In central-western New Jersey, rather close to the Delaware River, there is a town between the towns of Hope and Hazen having the maybe unfortunate name Buttzville (at least it made us chuckle). When we drove the kids home from camp, we just had to take a little detour to check it out.
Turns out it is just a regular little village, very small, and with a very cute post office that appears to be in an old gas station along the main road. Note the blue roof tiles, they are quite unusual around here. 4387 people live in Buttzville township. (photos by AREA)
It is really close to Oxford too, you can see it on this map. The little place is named for a person named Buttz, of course. As usual, NJ is flooded with history, wherever you go you run into former presidents, battlefields, old mills and abandoned railroads.
"The old town at this Warren County intersection, however, is called Buttzville and our river cuts right through the center of the little village. The beginning of a settlement here was a grist mill and a small house in which the miller and family lived. In 1839 the miller sold his house and business to Michael Robert Buttz. Buttz prospered and several subsequent generations of the family lived here and worked here. In anticipation,no doubt, Michael Robert Buttz named this little settlement Buttzville and that is its name today.
No members of the Buttz family live here today but several are buried in the local cemetery. River current is strong, anxious to get to the Delaware, and the area has some first rate trout fishing. Local historians attest to two notable fishermen, President Herbert Hoover and baseball's home run king, Babe Ruth, who fished in the Pequest in this area with great success." link

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Häftigt namn! Säkert ett dötrist ställe!

O.K. said...

Don't despair if you happen to live in Buttzville, because Hope is near.

LS said...

NOt far from Buttville is Pittstown, this is true. Pittstown is funny for the Swedes, same as Eskilstuna's Snopptorp, which exists for real too.

Olle said...

The map link does not work (invalid coordinates...)

LS said...

Oh, strange about the maplink. Well, you can type in Buttzville, NJ in the sidebar and get to the map instead.

Anonymous said...

These are house funny place buttzville but I like this house picture.

NikkiButz said...

Thank you for this post. Except for the jab at my last name (haha) I enjoyed the history bit. I have been looking into my history, which led me to Hans Michael Butz and Buttzville and was excited to find your blog about his influence on the town! Turns out he is my great great great great great great grandfather!