Mike (Cirba and Sweeney):
If we are getting technical about what actually went on in 1910 and 1911, they (that is MCC) did not buy anything in Nov. 1910. What they had in Nov. 1910 was a basic understanding (agreement in principle with HDC) that they would buy a certain amount of land for a certain amount of money out of a larger HDC tract from the HDC eventually if they agreed to get to work doing a course.
When they had that (agreement in principle) via two letters between Nickelson of the HDC and president Evans of MCC in Nov. 1910, then MCC got their lawyer and board member, T. DeWitt Cuyler, to swing into action and create what was known as The MCC Golf Association Company. We need to take very careful note of the company part of that because before that MCC had been operating at Haverford for golf with what was known as the MCC Golf Association which was formed in 1909 by a group of golfing members including Alan Wilson and I believe Hugh and a few others. I doubt that former MCC Golf Association was a separate registered company but it may've operated through a corporate entity within MCC known as the Haverford Land Co (not the same thing as HDC).
(Do you think these MCC "captains of the universe" like Lloyd, Scattergood, Griscom, Cuylers, Thayer et al were corporation freaks and geeks with all the complex financial shit that went along with all that or what?? I guarantee you if these bigtime business honchos could borrow a nickel for 5 1/4 cents on this side of the street and lend it out on the other side of the street for 5 1/2 cents or save a dollar in taxes somehow they would do it in a heartbeat with some kind of labrynthian corporate structure no matter how rich they were!
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It would take Cuylers who was apparently one of the most powerful men in the American railroad industry and an expert on corporate law and corporate registration a number of weeks to get the MCC Golf Association Company set up with officers, with a certain amount of stock and registered. That would not get done until around the third week of Dec. 1910.
At that point 161 acres was transfered from HDC to a man by the name of Rothwell (probably a title and trust company employee) for $1.00. Three days later Rothwell transfered the property to Lloyd and his wife. At that point Lloyd was the president of the newly set up MCC Golf Association Co.
Lloyd would hold the land for the golf course (120 acres) until July 19, 1911 at which point he transfered it back to Rothwell who transfered it to the MCC Golf Association Company the same day, each time for $1.00. Within a year or so the MCC Golf Association Company would lease the land and course to MCC, the club.
One might wonder what-all the 161 acres was that was initially transfered through to Lloyd and his wife in Dec. 1910. It was the entire 140 acre Johnson Farm and we believe it was the 21 acre Dallas estate. When Lloyd transfered the 120 acres back through Rothwell to the MCC Golf Association Co. in July 1911 we assume he kept about 40 acres of the old Johnson Farm across Ardmore Ave from the second hole that became part of the residential development to the west that was known as HDC. We feel pretty confident that for about the last 7-8 months (from Dec, 1910 to July 1911) Lloyd and his MCC syndicate had essentially been in control of HDC too and probably through a stock underwriting/offering he engineered and just a basic preconceived real estate sales management arrangement with the former owners of HDC and probably primarily MCC members et al many of which would be residential buyers and builders on the HDC land (221 acres). We've begun to track the real estate development sell out to the west over the next 7-12 years into the 1920s and a lot of them were MCC members including interestingly enough Hugh I. Wilson on the corner of Exeter Rd overlooking the 14th hole.
But the most fascinating and impressive thing to me is obviously there were a number of preconceived reasons Lloyd took control and ownership like that in the end of Dec. 1910 and according to a letter from Cuylers to Evans on Dec. 21 1910 one of those reasons was so Lloyd could move boundary lines for the course around at will because the boundaries of what would become the course had not been definitely determined upon at that point according to Cuylers.
And we also know because it is recorded in the administrative records of MCC that within a couple of weeks or sooner (the beginning of Jan. 1911) the Wilson Committee would be formed and according to their April report to the board they would spend the next three months between January and April first laying out many different courses on the ground, then going to NGLA for two days in the second week of March, then home to hone their course layouts down to five different plans, get Macdonald/Whigam back on April 6, 1911 for a day, go over the grounds and five plans, select one to be approved by the board and that was done on April 19, 1911.
That's what the records show, those are the facts, and in the course of all this at some point in 1911, Francis who was then a member of Wilson's committee had his idea of how to finally fix #15 and #16 which he said in his story had been a problem getting in all along with the last five holes (again obviously because that triangle that shows up on the plan back on Nov. 15, 1910 was just too damned narrow to fit the 15th green and 16th tee up into). Francis certainly knew to go to Lloyd and just get his permission on the spot to redelineate that road on the plan which wouldn't even be built for a couple more years and it was done (no deed or land transfer necessary at that point) and they probably did get quarry men to blow the top wall off the quarry in two days as his story said. The thing I think is so interesting is Francis's midnight visit to Lloyd could hardly have been a surprise in the slightest to Lloyd----he was ready for it because he and Cuylers and MCC had put him in position to do something precisely like that back in the end of Dec. 1910. In other words, they all saw the possibility of something like that coming and they said so in writing back in the end of Dec. 1911 because at that point no course or precise land figuration for the course had definitely been determined upon as they said in Dec 1910.
Had MCC had "a plan", a routing and course or anything like it in place in 1910 or certainly before Nov. 15, 1910 as Moriarty's essay contends they sure wouldn't have had to do all that and go through all that, would they? And what in the world would it have been all about then that the Wilson Committee was doing all those three months in the winter of 1911 with what they reported were their "numerous different courses on the ground" and then "five different plans" that would be used to select one to be approved on April 19, 1911?
Anyway, at least one piece of MCC correspondence also indicates throughout the time from the middle of June 1910 until well into the fall they all felt it not prudent to be too obvious about what they were doing which I suppose primarily meant having their eye on the Dallas estate.
I'm quite sure this will not be the end of all this on here, at least not from the essayist who seems to think again that this is now more about some threat from Philadelphians and others to impugn his reputation rather than about the truth of what really did happen at Merion in 1910 and 1911, and when and why and how thoughout that entire timeline of events, but in my opinion and most everyone else around here including Merion itself it sure should be the end of it!! It seems all that's left now is bickering over the meaning of a few words and sentences and the constant demands of a single person that everything available, even private club records that have never been in the public domain, be shown to him for his review because he decided, well over a year ago, to write with far less than complete information, an essay which turned out to be highly inaccurate, and apparently highly inaccurate because it lacked so much of the resource information that became available about the subject he chose; and has been criticized since because of all its inaccurate premises and conclusions about what Macdonald/Whigam must have done and what Hugh Wilson and his committee couldn't have done.
Add to that in nearly a century since this took place at Merion at Ardmore noone ever thought to question who the designers of the course were because there never has been any reason to question it. It was all recorded by the club and any historian seemed to understand that. There never was any mystery about it and never some puzzle that this essayist sometimes refers to on this discussion group. Apparently the only puzzle for him with Merion was he just didn't understand Merion's history very well, and by his own admission on here, when he began this campaign to contend someone else was the router and designer of the course or the driving force behind it. Still today he doesn't seem to understand it very well or at least he doesn't seem any more willing to admit that because of his lack of resource information when he published his essay his premises and conclusions in it were wrong.