"You see, if I have the right guy in mind, this particular CBM was a bit slow on the uptake as regards his architectural understanding of Merion, and even by the 1970's was still struggling with the very basics of the club, incuding apparently the spelling."
Michael Cirba, Expert GCA researcher/writer:
You know you are some expert on this stuff or else you're just danged lucky. That guy holding the MEH sign is actually about halfway home in discovering who REALLY designed Merion East.
Due to this issue of Merion's move and all this claptrap about Macdonald's far more significant part in it has got me and Wyno, I mean Wayno, researching as well the entire move and real estate development to the west and who all was responsible for the whole shebang. For this I have gone way, way back, before basically the PRR got into a sort of general master plan of creating the over all Main Line which was previous the 40,000-50,000 or so acres of the so-called Welsh tract (a bunch of Welsh immigrants prevailed upon William Penn to carve it out for them) back in 1685. But even before that and before Penn the land belonged to the Lenni-Lenape indian tribe and it was called Mehrion by them!!!!
So you are onto something there pal and I have also found that it looks like the first golf course on this site was designed by one Lancelot Lenni-Lenape, the ninteenth son of Chief Armaggedon "Big Gnads" Lenni-Lenape!!!
I believe Lancelot Lenni-Lenape might have been the first golf course architect in history and certainly with an inland golf course. I used to think Fernandina Beach Municipal's Timucuan indian architect, Tommy Birdsong, was the only American indian golf course architect but apparently Lancelot Lenni-Lenape was the first and had TommyB beat out by maybe 300-400 years.
I was just over at Merion and had I known this I would've told the president who I saw over there that Merion should now consider renaming the club Mehrion Golf Club to honor Lancelot Lenni-Lenape and instead of saying they are 113 years old they can now say their golf course is around 437 years old.
Matter of fact, Wayne and I were down in the quarry on #16 and we saw an old carving on one of the quarry walls of the former "Quarry Hole" at Merion obviously conceived of by Lancelot Lenni-Lenape and his tribe of amateur scout designers back around 1572. The green was in the same place it is today but you had to hit the approach shot over the top of the quarry wall that made the green totally blind. I guess Lancelot had some of his dad "Big Gnads" balls because obviously there was none of this "visibility" crap that some of these pale-faced pussys like Wilson and Francis et al got into about three plus centuries later when for some damned reason they felt it necessary to blow the top of the quarry wall off so golfers could see something of the green.
Matter of fact, the carving of the hole on the quarry wall was labeled "The Poconock hole" which was probably Lenni-Lenape for "Alps."
You're a genius Michael Cirba. You and your Uber-mole Bausch will go far in this business!
I also want you to know Mr. Cirba, and on another matter, that in the last 39 hours I have found a letter from one Walter Travis to one Purvis P. Pruffrock that is totally fascinating. It seems Purvis P. was the town of Southampton's most notorious drunk and over-all idiot but like people of that ilk are wont to do he had his ear to the ground out there better than anyone did (I suppose he was the best at having his ear to the ground out there because the truth of it is that most of the time his ear actually was on the ground!). Travis wanted to know what the word in the town was on himself amongst the Southampton towns-people because it seems Walter had been hammering a really hot little Shinnecock indian gal beginning about 1902 and damned if they didn't go out on that Sebonak property C.B. et al would end up buying a few years later to create the great NGLA. It seems from the letter Walter and his little sweetie had been out on that Sebonack property doing their thing perhaps hundreds of times and through all that wandering around and cavorting in the mulberry bushes and such with little Sallyo Shinnecock, Walter had routed and designed NGLA between otherwise utilized bursts of energy. It seems like Charlie Macdonald swiped Walter's routing and design plan for NGLA from him and attempted to make it look like he did it himself. Nothing of the kind! Walter Travis was the person who routed NGLA and when he told Macdonald he was going to go public with that information Charlie up and summarily fired his ass from the original NGLA committee that included Charlie and Whigam. I used to think that the tiff between Travis and Macdonald had something to do with a misunderstanding over the Schnectedy Putter issue but apparently not; the whole thing was over Charlie trying to take credit for Walter's NGLA routing and design plan. And all this doesn't even take into consideration that Walter probably knew those great holes abroad a ton better than the self-promoting C.B. ever did!
And Matter of fact, in that letter Walter mentioned to Purvis P that little Sallyo said that Walter should also claim he was the driving force behind that golf course because damned if she wasn't living proof and testimony to that fact on that thar land!