JohnC:
The following really is the meat of Moriarty's "theories"
about Merion and the Francis Land Swap story. When you begin to really consider his "theory" in the light of all the other factual evidence surrounding it I think you will clearly see why we say what we have and why we say his "theory" is truly fallacious!
"4. Multiple sources (including Hugh Wilson's account) indicate that Hugh Wilson was not involved the project until early 1911, and the first verifiable evidence of his involvement was a February 1, 1911 letter.
5. If the land swap occurred BEFORE Hugh Wilson became involved in the project, then Hugh Wilson could not have been involved in determining the initial routing.
That is it.
The reason that it is discussed so much is that they desperately need for the land swap to have happened while Hugh Wilson was working on the project. Otherwise, he could not have possibly been the driving force behind the routing and hole concepts."
JohnC:
Multiple sources, including Hugh Wilson's own account DO say Wilson's Committee was NOT formed until the beginning of 1911. Matter of fact, those multiple sources never talk about just Wilson, they all and always talk about Wilson and his ENTIRE committee!! None of them were appointed until the beginning of 1911. Francis was on Wilson's committee! There is no evidence anywhere or at any time that points to Francis doing ANYTHING for MCC before being appointed to that Wilson Committee in the beginning of 1911. Francis himself, in the rest of his story, even explains he was 'added to' Wilson's Committee.
David Morarty says in #5; "If the land swap occured BEFORE Wilson became involved, then Wilson could not have been involved in the routing."
JohnC, come on, can't you see what's going on here with some truly tortured logic by Moriarty?
"IF the land swap occured BEFORE Wilson became involved?
??
THAT is one MIGHTY BIG "IF" JohnC! And Moriarty has been trying any conceivable way he can for a year to make that MIGHTY BIG IF look a whole lot like some FACT!! Well it just isn't; never was! And a real fact is there is not a single SHRED OF EVIDENCE ANYWHERE or AT ANY TIME that Francis was out there in 1910 AND before he was appointed to the Wilson Committee!!!
I have asked Moriarty a good dozen times on this thread alone IF he can produce ANY EVIDENCE at all from anywhere that Francis was out there in 1910 before being appointed to the Wilson committee in the beginning of 1911, and each and every time he ignores the question clearly refusing to answer it because he knows as well as the rest of us THERE IS NO EVIDENCE of that and there never has been.
All Moriarty used was the fact that that triangle appears on that Nov. 15, 1910 land plan and he uses ONLY HIS OWN INTERPRETATION (he refuses to consider anyone elses") of what Francis' MEANT BY his description of the 130x190 dimension, and that his description FITS that triangle on that Nov. 15, 1910 land plan and so the whole thing must have been created BEFORE Nov. 15, 1910!! It does nothing of the kind!! That triangle on that Nov. 15, 1910 land plan can't even be accurately measured anyway because two sides of it are "APPROXIMATE" anyway, even by Moriarty's own recent admission. And not just that but the actual area out there that creates that description was clearly just added onto what was obviously an area a bit too narrow on their working topo contour maps to fit the 15th green and 16th tee up into as they are today. The way this was all done was not by the creation of that entire triangle but by the redelineation of the entire Golf House Road that created the entire fix for THE LAST FIVE HOLES that Francis mentioned in his story too!
This whole Francis thing in his essay is a tortured logic guise to slide Francis back ahead of his committee timeline to make it look like Wilson wasn't even involved in the routing or hole designs, that he was a total novice and therefore someone like Macdonald/Whigam or Barker must have done the majority of the routing and design or whatever with a little help from Francis and Lloyd.
For Christ Sake, all three of them were only at Ardmore for one single damn day in June 1910, if that; Barker never returned and Macdonald/Whigam did not return to Ardmore for ten more months until April 6, 1911.
John, are you beginning to get the picture now of how a real revisionist essayist with a preconceived conclusion (Wilson was too much the novice so M/W must have done it for them even if M/W didn't even have the time and were probably never even asked to route or design anything) tried to pull the wool over everyone's eyes apparently figuring no one would really analyze the timeline of events that really does exist FACTUALLY in MCC's and Merion's records from back then between 1910 and 1911?