What’s in a name? | Butts Station Road, Chesapeake

THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

AUG 13, 2012

The road in the northeastern part of the city shared its name with a train station where people could catch the train to downtown Norfolk.

But its roots can be traced to a family in the early 1600s – centuries before Chesapeake became a city in 1963, when the city of South Norfolk and Norfolk County merged.

“Years ago, it was Norfolk County – it was farmland,” said Robert Hitchings, head archivist of the Sargeant Memorial Room at the Mary D. Pretlow Anchor Branch Library in Norfolk. He said he descended from the Butt family. “You had townships. Butts Station was a township, and the main road was Butts Station Road.”

An Englishman named Robert Butt settled in the “Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River” in the mid-1600s, buying 1,200 acres next to what would become Great Bridge, according to historian Marshall Wingfield Butt, who compiled an account on the descendants of Robert Butt.

A cypress swamp stretched across much of the land, and Butt logged it. He also bought another 380 acres.

When he died in 1676, he left his land to four sons and his wife.

In England, the surname Butt with and without the “s” was not at all uncommon, wrote Wingfield Butt.

According to a 1931 treatise, A History of Surnames of the British Isles, men’s surnames were borne from the descriptions of their land holdings: Butts were abutting strips of farmland.

As to the Butts Station Road’s exact origins, it’s quite possible the name stemmed from one of Robert Butt’s descendants, but which one is unknown.

Jeannette Selan, volunteer with the Norfolk County Historical Society in the Wallace Memorial Room of the Chesapeake Central Library, said the station was named for a landowner from the area – the Butt family owned tracts of land near the station, as seen on an 1887 map. But it’s not clear for whom exactly the station was named.

Stuart Smith, former president of the Norfolk County Historical Society, said the road likely preceded the station.

“A lot of times they named the roads after the main family that lived in the area,” he said.

Butts Station was one of five along the railroad where county residents hopped on the Norfolk Southern passenger trains to go shopping in downtown Norfolk. Other stops were at Northwest, St. Brides, Hickory Ground, and Centreville, according to “Chesapeake: A Pictorial History.”

Robert Hitchings, head archivist of the Sargeant Memorial Room, contributed to this report.