Peculiar Names: Noodle Doosie

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is full of communities with peculiar names. This series examines their curious etymology. Next up: Noodle Doosie.

You will not find Noodle Doosie on any modern maps, but the place is easy to find. From Hahnstown, follow Napierville Road toward Muddy Creek until it meets Landis Road. That quiet cluster of homes in East Cocalico Township was once known by one of Lancaster County’s stranger community names.

Today, the area is generally known as Napierville. Earlier accounts described Noodle Doosie and Napierville as adjoining communities with boundaries so indistinct that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. By 2008, Lancaster County columnist Larry Alexander simply reported that Noodle Doosie “goes by the name Napierville these days.”

The name appeared in several forms over the years, including Noodle Doozey, Noodledoosie, Noodledoozie, Noodledoose, and Nudeldoosie. However it was spelled, period newspaper accounts make one thing clear: Noodle Doosie was a real place.

In May 1962, The Ephrata Review reported that firefighters had been called to a field fire at a small settlement known as “Noodledoosie,” about two miles east of the Hahnstown crossroads. One month later, a used car dealership called Dull’s advertised its business location “in Noodle Doosie.” The advertisement even directed customers to take the second right from Hahnstown Road onto the road to Noodle Doosie.

A 1971 newspaper account reported that the Pennsylvania highway department had once erected a sign pointing toward the community. The name apparently proved too tempting for a collector. Someone stole the sign, and it was never replaced.

So What Does Noodle Doosie Mean

So how did Noodle Doosie acquire its peculiar name? That is where history gives way to folklore.

When interviewed in 1971, Miles Fry, whose family had deep roots in the area, recalled that Noodle Doosie was once known for its pretty Pennsylvania Dutch girls. They were supposedly described as “canoodly,” a word that somehow evolved in the local dialect into “noodle doozey.” Fry connected the expression to Scottish entertainer Sir Harry Lauder, whose 1916 music-hall song “I’m Going to Marry-’Arry,” also known as “Canoodle Doodle,” featured similar language.

Chorus
I’m going to marry-arry sweet little Carrie-arrie
On the fifth, the twenty-fifth of Janu-anu-anuary when
We’ll canoodle doodle right fall-a-noodle-doodle
On the fifth, the twenty-fifth of Janu-anu-ary-Oh!

Later accounts offered a slightly different explanation. In those versions, the name grew from stories about two overeager men “noodling” with the same woman. Details varied by storyteller, but the tale usually came with winks, laughter, and a suggestion that the full meaning was not entirely suitable for polite company.

No surviving record proves either explanation. The safest conclusion is that the name emerged from Pennsylvania Dutch humor and local storytelling, then changed as generations repeated it.

A Community Along Muddy Creek

The surrounding area had a long history. In 1752, Thomas and Richard Penn granted land there to Peter Gundy. The property later passed to Martin Bowman, who built an early mill along Muddy Creek near a place called Beamer’s Hole. In 1783, Hans Martin Fry purchased the land at a sheriff’s sale. His descendants continued farming and operating businesses there for generations.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Noodle Doosie had a store operated by Isaac “Uncle Ike” Flickinger and his wife, Caroline. Residents also built a small stone meetinghouse on Flickinger’s land around the time of the Civil War. It served as a Sunday school and hosted itinerant ministers who conducted evangelistic services. The building eventually fell into ruin, and its remaining foundations and walls were cleared away during the 1960s.

Noodle Doosie even found a second life in Pennsylvania Dutch entertainment. In 1968, Melvin J. Horst created Jakey Budderschnip, a folk humorist supposedly from Noodle Doosie. Horst performed as Jakey throughout the region and appeared regularly on WIOV-FM, helping introduce the nearly forgotten community name to a new generation.

Today, only a handful of houses remain near the old crossroads, and the name Noodle Doosie has largely disappeared from everyday use.

But it was real. Newspaper reports sent firefighters there. Advertisements directed customers there. The state once marked the way with a sign. And as long as its peculiar name continues to be remembered, Noodle Doosie has not entirely vanished from the map.

Finding Noodle Doosie

Where Napierville Road meets Landis Road.

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Resources

• The Ephrata Review, Thursday, May 3, 1962
• The Ephrata Review, Thursday, June 14, 1962
• The Ephrata Review, Thursday, July 2, 1964
• LNP Lancaster Online, Sunday, January 3, 1971
• LNP Lancaster Online, Sunday, November 17, 1991
• Intelligencer Journal, Saturday, July 10, 1993
• Noodle Doosie? Can’t get there from here
• Business card for the late “Jakey Budderschnip” of Noodle Doosie