Morris county CC
Joe, I have their excellent club history.
Morris County CC was founded as a womens only golf club - the men (who paid all the bills) were relegated to the financial workings of the club.
An insurrection took place in 1895 when the men felt the members should own the land and the course - the entire operation should be run as a business. And so it was from then on.
Morristown in the early days had mor millionaires per capita than any city in the country. (Was also the home to the Otto Kahn family before he moved on to Long Island - but that’s a story unto itself).
The original course was across from where the present course is and the street thru ws Punchbowl Road - yes there was a very nice natural punchbowl there on the original property.
Chapter 10 in their club history is entitled:
The Seth Raynor Golf Course:
For their new golf course, Morris County, turned to Seth Raynor, a protege of Charles Blair Macdonald, a former U S Amateur Champion generally recognized as America’s first serious golf course architect. Raynor was on hand as early as 1915, when he made a topographical map of the land north of the railroad, including the 137 acres owned by Punch Bowl Reality. Raynor consulted with Macdonald on the design of the new golf course, and construction started early I July 1916. By the year’s end all the eighth fairway had been cleared, logged, stumped, stoned and plowed.
It goes on in much detail
worked halted because of WWI
There is an excellent drawing of the course in the book with the fairways drawn in and the holes named - the usual suspects - Cape - Redan - Roadside - even Gibralter -Sleepy Hollow - Short Westward Ho - Eden and others bearing names describing local features - Shoulder - Beeches - Lackawanna (the local rail line)
There are other earlier maps of the older layout - again much detail.
A B Frost was one of their most famous members.
County CC is one of the great clubs here in NJ
I also have this information in my course notes:
Morris County Golf Club 1915-1920 -
Seth Raynor
totally re-built by Raynor- 1915 mapping - construction began in 1916 - halted during the war and completed 1919-1920 opening day 1920 Raynor apparently modified 6 holes and added 12 new - may not be true - I would consider that all 18 were Raynor's hole
I also have some notes saying good old Henry Whigham (of PA fame - sorry) was involved there with Raynor - makes sense because the was just starting out on his own
They have a lot of aerial there in the club which we were allowed to share - “we” meaning Gil and I who thought we had the renovation job a number of years ago.