David,
I'm just trying to determine what's out there and it seems to me that the writers we've come across in our Cobb's Creek research who credited Wilson with the design of both courses at Merion (including William Evans, in a January 1915 article, where he writes;
"A committee made up of Hugh Wilson, the man responsible for the two Merion courses; Ab Smith, who has done much to stiffen and improve...will aid the park engineers in laying out the course (at Cobbs' Creek)" ),
as well as the story of his 6-7 month visit overseas repeated by Evans, by "Billy Bunker", and others, who were the insiders of the time to have all been misled or lying seems somewhat absurd on the face of it. What would their goal be? These weren't reporters that we think of today, who are outside of a process looking in and prying for information...these guys were all friends and fully aware of each others activities around golf to an extreme degree.
If you'd like me to send you our Cobb's Creek research...all 200+ pages, I'd be happy to, but what it points out time and again was that these guys were almost incestual in the way they worked together and collaboratively and knew exactly what each other were doing at any given time.
Which leads me to the question of Ship's Manifests. I don't recall which ones you originally searched, but if memory serves, it was all ships coming into the US during a period? Perhaps New York and Philly?
Yesterday I went onto the link Rich Goodale provided of all ships leaving England and did various searches.
As mentioned, the fact that George Crump's 1910 trip wasn't found had me dubious about reliability of these logs from the start.
My next search on "H. Wilson" between 1908 and 1912 led to over 800 results. Given that you have to pay for every detailed lookup, I decided I had cast the net too wide.
Then, I tried just Hugh Wilson, and got another bunch to search through.
I finally came across a trip from Southampton, England, on October 28, 1910, which listed as passengers;
Hugh Wilson
Mrs. Hugh Wilson
Two daughters (under age 12) which was the case as of that date
A Governess
A Maid
The only strange part is that the manifest is divided in two parts...what's termed as "British passengers", and "Aliens".
Of the 242 souls aboard, about 35-40% are "aliens", and each has listed their country of origin. The strange part is that although the ports of call the ship would travel to included Lisbon, Rio, and other common ports, not a single passenger was listed as "American".
On the trip, the Hugh Wilson and family in question rode First Class.
Their destination was Buenos Aires, which may seem a bit odd except for the fact that Hugh Wilson's primary profession was Insurance...not personal or home or life...but Maritime Insurance, a business that likely would have led to contacts and business all over the world.
It also occurred to me that there is no way in hell that the well-heeled members of Merion would have sent a young man with a young family and young children overseas for 6-7 months without sending his family...and sending assistants.
Please see the following. The second link takes you to a larger, zoomable version.
I can't say for certain that it's our guy, but it also seems strange to me that the person listed...a Hugh Wilson (of Scotland??) would have had the means to travel first class to Buenos Aires with his family and servants unless he were either going on vacation (did Scotsmen vacation in Argentina???)....or perhaps an American student of golf returning circuitously from a trip overseas, attending to business on the way??
In any case, this type of thing is why I'm saying that there is no absence of evidence...it's just that all the evidence hasn't been found, disseminated, and sifted.
Thanks
Mike
A larger version can be found here;
http://darwin.chem.villanova.edu/~bausch/images/HughWilsonManifest.jpg