What's in a name? | Pughsville, Chesapeake-Suffolk

Maybe you sounded it out the first time you motored past on Interstate 664 and saw the sign for exit 10. Pughsville Road.

Come again? The name of the woodsy neighborhood on Suffolk's northeastern border with Chesapeake has long tripped up passers-by - even locals.

Viola Cobb, 87, grew up there and still lives on Old Pughsville Road, on the Chesapeake side. In the 1950s she helped raise two children for a doctor in Portsmouth.

"They called it 'Pugsville,' " Cobb said.

Her brother, William Gaines, has heard other variations.

"Some people call it 'Pew.' Some people call it 'Pug.' But the name of it is Pughsville," he said, stressing the "you" in Pugh.

Mary Richardson, a longtime Pughsville civic leader, said she has tried to research the name's origin but so far has come up empty.

One man once told her the area got its name for the swampland under it.

"It was not good for growing anything because it would 'pew' everything back up," Richardson said.

The Pugh family name has old ties to Suffolk. Before the Civil War, a free black man named Tony Pugh ran a popular tavern near Driver in what today is northern Suffolk, according to "Suffolk: A Celebration of History," by Kermit Hobbs and William A. Paquette.

Gaines said a late cousin of his who died at the age of 97 had told him Pughsville was named after a white businessman named Pugh.

Gaines said the relative showed him where "Old Man Pugh" was buried, but he never saw a marker or headstone.

When Interstate 664 went up, it passed right over the spot, Gaines said.

"The bypass and all that would be on top of his grave as we speak," he said.

Dave Forster, (757) 222-5563, dave.forster@pilotonline.com