"The question is how and why did they decide to add the Dallas Estate to MCC, and when? Since it is in the Nov 10 plan, and Freeman transferred it immediately to Lloyd just a week earlier on Nov 4, we know the decision was made at least by sometime in October 1910 (it had to take some time to execute paperwork, no?)"
Jeffrey:
That is incorrect. Freeman did not transfer anything to Lloyd on Nov, 4, 1910. Matter of fact, Freeman never transfered anything to Lloyd at any time!
TePaul,
I took that little FACT from both the newspaper article AND your post 1455, pasted in verbatim below. The first pp is, I believe, a paste in of your own quoting David's Essay. The second pp is your response.
"But despite the reports about Mr. Freeman and his supposed plans for a house, ownership of the Dallas Estate immediately passed to Haverford Development Company. In fact, within 11 days of the November article reporting Mr. Freeman’s supposed purchase, the development company had not only secured the Dallas Estate, they had also sold an option on the parcel to Merion Cricket Club. Given this quick turnaround, Mr. Freeman (if he existed) may have been acting clandestinely on behalf of the development company, which was perhaps hoping to avoid having to pay an extortionate sum for land crucial to their deal with Merion."
We can check this particular transfer of the Dallas estate at the Recorder of Deeds at Media, Delaware County, if need be, but I am almost certain that HDC did not excecute an option on that property with MCC in Nov. 1910 as the "Missing Faces of Merion" essay states above. I believe HDC probably had an option with Freeman to purchase the Dallas estate while almost simultaneously reaching an AGREEMENT (not a purchase) with MCC to purchase it (along with 96 acres from the 140.137 Johnson farm (21+96=117)) in the coming months. As we know on Dec. 19, 1910 Horatio Gates Lloyd would take title to the Dallas estate (21 acres) along with the entire Johnson Farm (140.137) which together made of the entirely of his 161 acre Dec. 19, 1910 deed. Within approximately seven months (Dec, 1910-July 1911) Lloyd would transfer 120.1 acres of that 161 acre Dec. 19, 1910 deed to MCCGA.I even took the word "transfer" from your post. It was also one of the posts I referenced to Mike C that prefaces comments with the words that you strongly believe, but could check the records.
In any case, arguing those little details doesn't detract from my question to Mike and you.
Mike C,
Don't go all TePaul on me and rewrite entire time lines! I think I understand the basics, and was purposely trying to narrow down the decision (not the actual deed transfer) on when to add the Dallas Estate to the MCC golf course. It is, after all, just as important to the final form of MCC as the famous Francis Land Swap!
Note, I did NOT say ANYTHING about June 10, CBM, Whigham, or Barker, and yet you felt the need (uneccessarily IMHO) to drag that back up and refute it, while ignoring the meat of the question.
If we believe newspaper articles, we still need to interpret what, when and why this came to be as it did.
The key dates that we KNOW are the August 11 agreement by Mr. Freeman to buy the Dallas Estate, and the November 4 finalization of that purchase, together with the agreement for it being transferred right to HDC (sorry I said Lloyd in a previous post to confuse TePaul, even though I think practically for the purposes of the MCC history, they were about one and the same) by Novemeber 10, 1910 and included on their concept plan that was presented to the members.
TePaul's theory is that the whole idea came very quickly just before Novemeber 4, and that Freeman was an outside individual.
DM's theory was that Freeman was acting on behalf of MCC on August 11, meaning that the idea hatched sometime in July, not long after MCC presented its report based on coversations with CBM and the letter covering some of those conversations.
Neither is an unlikely scenario in my experience. I have seen no facts presented either way to prove the case. Someone should probably look up and see who this Freeman guy is. If in any way connected to the club or HDC, we coud probably presume that the idea was hatched in July 1910 and took about a month to put together to where he could take an option. It COULD have been a result of discussions with CBM.
If he truly was interested in building a home and NOT connected to HDC or MCC, then maybe HDC sought to buy the Dallas Estate right after learning that someone else was taking advantage of their plans to build fine houses around its shining new MCC centerpiece to the subdivision.
In either case, the decision was made at least sometime between August and November that this land was better suited to golf. It was possible the decision was under consideration in July.
If the second scenario is correct, following TePaul's line of thinking, then we would need to examine why the MCC committee decided that it would be better to have the Dallas Estate and not the other land in HDC's holdings. Did it just "look right?" or was there some kind of routing work going on to suggest to them that it was a better fit? I am asking and truly open to facts and even other possible interpretations!
TePaul suggests simultaneously that these were all really smart guys and at the same time, would make an important decision without really thinking about it (IMHO, doing a routing of some kind) I mean, THAT does sound a little counterintuitive, doesn't it?
Like I said, I think the key would be to know if Freeman was an interloper or an insider. If insider, the idea for the Dallas Estate surely hatched in July 1910 as DM speculated. If an interloper, the idea for adding the Dallas Estate probably happened soon after that August 11, 1910 newspaper article, and MCC/HDC probably started working on Mr. Freeman to buy that property, which delayed the actual sale until November, with the known results that Freeman gave/traded/sold the land to MCC for other considerations.
And, once again, since it went RIGHT to the MCC side of the land ledger, how was that decision made?
PS - If TePaul tells me this logic is flawed because its not in the MCC record, I will puke all over my computer......