It is the only Major Championship venue to be named after someone who was murdered.
Baltusrol, and venue for this week’s PGA Championship, was named in honour of Boltus Roll a Dutch-born farmer who at age 61 was attacked, tortured and killed by two strangers 0n the night of February 22nd, 1831.
His wife, who was alone in the house with him at the time, testified at the trial of one of the accused that she and her husband had retired early. about midnight she was awakened by a pounding on the door. When admission was refused the door burst open. “Two men entered; one a large man, the other a small man. They seized Roll, drew him from the bed, slatted him about the room and dragged him to the door.”
Later, the large man came to the stairs and told her to remain in her room, but when he went out she followed. She saw two men tying Baltus. The snow was very deep, but they threw him in a puddle of icy water. He twice called to her. After that, “he did not make any noise and I thought he was dead.” She slipped out of the door and wandered aimlessly into the woods through the snow.
Boltus Roll ‘murdered’ in 1831 and with his gravestone located just four miles away in Westfield, New Jersey
It rained all night and she was exhausted when morning came. Returning to the house, she saw Baltus lying in a snowbank, bound hand and foot, and lifeless. She did not go in for fear the murderers were still there, but went to the home of a neighbour, Jesse Cahoon. When he heard her story, he summoned Brook Sayre (her husband’s cousin) and Joseph Cain, who lived down the road. They thought Mrs. Roll had lost her mind, but returned with her to the house.
It was as she had said. Inside was great confusion. The news spread throughout the country. It was the crime of the century. The metropolitan dailies gave full details. Suspicion at once settled upon Peter B. Davis and Lycidias Baldwin, ne’er-do-wells, who had been seen frequently in the locality. Davis was known to be desperately in need of cash and to have sought an accomplice to go with him to a place where they could “get a thousand dollars.” Roll was supposed to have kept a considerable sum of money hidden somewhere in his house.
Baltusrol Golf Club and named in honour of murdered Dutch farmer Boltus Roll
When Baldwin heard that the police had arrested Davis, he fled to Morristown and committed suicide in a room at the tavern. Davis was tried at a special session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, in Newark, before Chief Justice Ewing. Although the evidence pointed strongly to his guilt, he was acquitted, because some of the most damaging testimony was ruled out as “illegal.” During the trial, however, he admitted forgery and was afterwards arraigned before court on four indictments, to three of which he plead guilty. He was sentenced to eight years on each count, and died in prison.
His gravestone lies to this day in the Presbyterian Churchyard in nearby Westfield, New Jersey. (See photo & note spelling of his first name).
In the 1890’s area residents purchased the property and built a golf course on it naming the club ‘Baltusrol’ but also given the large hill behind the clubhouse had been called Baltusrol Mountain.
The murdered man’s cottage is still standing, a short distance beyond the hill where the eighth and eleventh holes are situated.
Source: New York Times, November 17, 1901, p. 14. In a column named “Consuls and Navy Jacks: Odd Bits of Life by the Sea-Going Hobo.”
