What's in a name? | Pitchkettle Road, Suffolk

The name has a quaintness to it, a sense of something rural and austere and long since retired.

Pitchkettle Road is no dirt farm lane, though. Motorists zipping around the north side of downtown can take it on the U.S. 58 bypass. In 2006, thousands did to get to the site for that year's Homearama.

But while Pitchkettle Road continues to develop - too quickly for some, too slowly for others - the name recalls something from the past, even if local historians and longtime residents aren't quite sure what.

Lore has it that American Indians first favored the path and, while on it, "pitched kettles" for camp, said City Treasurer Ron Williams, whose father and grandfather both farmed land there.

Another theory: The name comes from the Indians' practice of taking the pitch, or resin, from nearby pine trees to seal the wood on their canoes, Williams said.

Sue Woodward, executive director of the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society, said the story passed to her from the city's late historian Marion Watson involved an 18th century pitch-making operation along the Nansemond River.

For years, "there remained the site of the pitch kettle, easily visible," Woodward said she was told.

References to pitch arise sporadically in historical records of Suffolk's early years. In one instance, a touring Englishman visiting around 1785 writes how locals used a form of it to help them stay above ground. The source is "Bible Records of Suffolk and Nansemond County Virginia."

The Englishman wrote that Suffolk stands on a soil so sandy "that in every step in the street the sand comes above your ancles, which renders it extremely disagreeable.

"To remedy this inconvenience in some small degree, near their doors they have emptied barrils of tar or pitch, which spreads wide, the sand incorporating it, and forming a hard solid consistence, some kind of an apology for pavement, and thereby renders walking much more tolerable."

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