Sean Arble said:
"Tom
I think you are being a bit harsh on guys who look for documented evidence of events. As you rightly point out, because documentation is lacking doesn't mean something didn't happen, but it sure makes the pieces fit together better when there is documentation - especially in cases where events are not quite clear.
For instance, you state that the Merion history writers must have been looking at some physical evidence to deduce that Wilson went to the UK before starting on Merion. Why? Could it not be word of mouth which led folks to believe Wilson went to the UK earlier than might be the case?"
Sean:
You think I'm being a bit harsh on people who look for documented evidence of events do you?
Why do you say that? Is it because I said absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence? If so, that's a statement of fact. What's harsh about it?
Some of us certainly didn't get along very well with David Moriarty or even Tom MacWood who certainly seemed to imply a much greater influence from MacDonald/Whigam on the architecture of Merion than some of us feel is warranted by a ton of various types of evidence to the contrary including the Wilson brothers themselves. But that certainly doesn't mean I, for one, don't admire Moriarty, for instance, for all the research he did checking ship manifests between Europe and America at that time. But as Mike Cirba just said, it seemed he was strongly implying that if a ship manifest with Wilson on it could not be found BEFORE Merion went into construction that strongly implied he did not go over there BEFORE Merion went into construction.
We don't believe that absence of the evidence of a ship manifest with Wilson on it implies such a thing and furthermore we believe that implying such a thing is pretty illogical and just not very good deducing of the events of history with what is available. Does David Moriarty thinks he searched the manifest of every ship that sailed between the US and Europe during those years? If he does, I'd suggest it’s a whole lot more than just a little unlikely that he’s mistaken.
And then there're certainly other logical ways of looking at what already exists. In Desmond Tolhurst's history book of Merion he mentioned that the club decided to send Wilson to Europe in 1910 to study golf architecture in preparation for the building of Merion East!
Where did Tolhurst get that date and that information? Well, obviously today we aren't exactly sure. But because we aren't sure does that mean he was wrong or odder yet that he just made it up? On the latter, I would very seriously doubt that. But yet, someone like David Moriarty was seemingly implying that since the only ship manifest he could find that had Hugh Wilson on it was the Spring of 1912, that must mean the trip Tolhurst was referring to and that his contention that a trip in 1910 couldn’t have happened. Is that a logical assumption to make? I, for one, don't think so. Why would Moriarty just assume that since that was the only ship manifest he could find with Hugh Wilson on it and that that must mean that was Wilson’s first trip to Europe for Merion? And, even odder, why would he assume that might have been Wilson's first trip to Europe? Those assumptions are not good ones, in my opinion, and they don't seem like particularly intelligent research deductions either.
But you and the others who don’t seem satisfied with what evidence does exist, should consider this carefully. Unless, Tolhurst and former Merion history writers just made up that 1910 trip of Wilson’s to Europe out of whole cloth which seems unlikely, then where did Merion get any evidence of the 1910 trip of Wilson’s they reported? Well, obviously some of them may’ve gotten it from contemporaneous reporting done of that fact. The article from the Philadelphia Public Ledger in October, 1913 is one such example.
In that article, the reporter said Wilson went to Europe for Merion ‘some years ago’! That article was written in 1913 and if the first and the only trip Wilson made to Europe for Merion was in 1912 the previous year (as a David Moriarty seems to believe and seems to be implying), that writer probably would’ve been called on that as inaccurate by Wilson or Merion just after he wrote it. One should probably even consider that that article writer probably checked his facts and dates with Wilson and others in that article BEFORE he wrote it, as good reporters usually do. We, here, in Philadelphia, are aware of a number of facts that were reported in newspapers and periodicals in which the writer was asked to correct various reported inaccuracies. The most notable was probably Tillinghast’s reporting of who made a donation to Pine Valley to finish the course after Crump died. Tillinghast did do a rather comprehensive retraction.
But the thing that fascinates me the most, and is fairly comical, is some today actually seem to feel when some of these old articles from the teens or whatever are found again today that means facts and evidence in them is being found for the very FIRST time. Aren’t they forgetting that probably thousands of people read those articles back then and in many cases those articles were saved by the clubs mentioned in the articles. Perhaps Tolhurst or a previous history writer was looking at that very article posted above or others that were more exact about the dates and Wilson’s trips to Europe.
People like you and Moriarty and MacWood may even try to suggest that some or most of the facts reported in some of those old articles was just wrong back then and has therefore always been inaccurate, but, again, I’d suggest if those articles were reporting totally false facts contemporaneously the writers of those articles probably would’ve been asked to print retractions and report things accurately by the very people they were reporting on, like Hugh Wilson himself.
Just because some of us haven’t been able to find some of those old articles is no reason to ASSUME they don’t exist or never existed or the events they report and explain didn’t happen.
That’s the problem I have with researchers on here who just ASSUME an absence of evidence is basically the same thing as evidence of absence.
By the way, what is an example of EVIDENCE of ABSENCE in the case of Wilson being in Europe in 1910? Well, obviously it would be if we had evidence that he was here in America throughout 1910. We actually did that with Wilson’s whereabouts in the first half of 1911 by the postmarks and stationery of his constant correspondence with Piper and Oakley of the US Dept of Agriculture. In that time span Wilson was in Philadelphia enough to preclude the amount of time necessary to go to Europe.