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The gruesome true story behind Baltusrol's name
SPRINGFIELD, N.J.—Baltusrol Mountain looms over the clubhouse at Baltusrol Golf Club, a presence both obvious and subtle. Local knowledge holds that every putt on every green bends away from the mountain. Local knowledge also holds that there’s a dark story behind the name Baltusrol, and as the golf world’s best convene here for the PGA Championship, the grim story is once again seeing the light of day.
The hill once belonged to a farmer named Baltus Roll, who lived with his wife and son in a small house that still stands, growing apples and raising livestock on the same land that’s now the home to one of the nation’s preeminent golf courses. It was an idyllic life, or as close to idyllic as life in the 1830s could get.
It came to a sudden, violent end. On the night of Feb. 22, 1831, Roll and his wife were awakened by a loud banging on their front door. Someone outside was shouting, demanding Roll get up. When he didn’t, the door shattered inward. Two men rushed into the house, hauled Roll out of bed, threw him out into the cold rain, and then began to tie him up.
“The large man was at his head, choking him,” Roll’s wife Susannah testified in June of that year. “I did not see him stir, nor did I hear him make any noise. I heard them say to him, ‘Lie still and we will not hurt you.’ I thought he was dead.”
While the men focused on Baltus Roll, Susannah escaped into the night. When she returned at dawn, she found Roll dead atop a snowbank, bound and stripped. “There were no mortal wounds on the deceased,” a coroner wrote, “but his throat appeared to be so hard pressed as to convince me that he had been choked to death.”
Law enforcement focused on two suspects; one overdosed on laudanum, perhaps deliberately, just weeks after Roll’s death, while the trial of the other made headlines in New York City the rest of the summer. The suspect was declared not guilty, but was found guilty on an unrelated forgery; reports differ on whether he was pardoned or died in prison.
Baltus Roll is buried in a small church cemetery in nearby Westfield, under a copper-colored stone that reads “In memory of Boltus (sic) Roll, who was murdered Feb. 22nd 1831 in the 62nd year of his age.” A chilling inscription beneath reads, “Ye friends that weep around my grave / Compose your mind to rest / Prepare with me for sudden death.”
In death, Baltus Roll’s name graced both the mountain and a road that runs through the area, and in 1896 a gentleman by the name of Louis Keller used it to christen his newly-built club on Roll’s old farmland.
The club has hosted seven U.S. Opens and two PGA Championships, but amid the celebrations and acclaim, the tale of Baltus Roll has never been far. A.W. Tillinghast, the famed architect who designed the PGA Championship course, wrote of hearing and seeing peculiar creatures that roamed the mountain after nightfall. And any time anyone wonders where the peculiar name comes from, the gruesome tale of Baltus Roll is sure to follow.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
