Tom,
Shelley apparently did not have, or misinterpreted, a number of documents based on what you and Patrick have provided.
According to your transcription, Shelley wrote;
"In the fall of 1912 a few enthusiastic men of the Philadelphia golf district got together to discuss the building of just such a course [a winter course]. Fortunately, George Crump, of Merchantville, NJ, was one of the group. He accepted the assignment of finding a suitable site. It was not long after the he wrote to his friends: 'I think I have landed on something pretty fine. It is 14 miles below Camden, at a stop called Summner, on the Reading RR to Atlantic City--a sandy soil, with rolling ground, among the pines."He makes it sound as though this idea for an Uber course and Crump's assignment to find suitable land began with a meeting in the Fall of 1912. That is clearly and provably inaccurate.
First, we have Howard Perrin's letter to prospective members, dated April 1st, 1913, which begins;
Dear Sir:
For some years, a number of men who are interested in golf for golf's sake have been thinking about the possibilities of a course easily accessible to Philadelphia, where the ground conditions were such as to allow the maximum amount of winter play. This place has been located by George A. Crump, some fifteen miles from Camden, on the line of the Reading Railway, just below Clementon, NJ. It is sandy, rolling, wooded country, with streams of water flowing through it. Near enough to a town to solve the caddy question and easily accessible, both by railroad and automobile. After satisfying himself that all the various conditions of the soil, the general layout of the ground for a golf course and its accessibility were favorable, and acting upon the advice of friends, he has purchased 184 acres for the purpose.Furthermore, we know Crump's purchase of 184 acres took place during the Fall of 1912, in October.
We also know that while abroad in the Fall/Winter of 1910 on a golf trip with Joseph Baker, Crump wrote to his brother-in-law Ralph Kellam on a postcard, saying,
Please buy for me a large map of Camden Co. of most recent date.Now, perhaps while golfing the great courses abroad Crump was worried about how to drive across the New Jersey county he grew up in, but I would suggest this had much more to do with locating a golf course than concern about motorways.
We also know that J.E. Ford reported in 1928 (the same year Shelley joined Pine Valley, and ten years after Crump's death), in an article where Howard Perrin was apparently interviewed and quoted, that Crump took Perrin and
"journeyed one morning late in the summer of 1912 to Sumner Station", where they spent the day traipsing around the site with Crump enthusiastically proclaiming it's suitability for a course, and where Crump asked Perrin to build the club, telling Perrin that he'd build the course.
I would guess that Shelley made his mistake by confusing Father Carr's account (published January 1915) of a meeting at the Colonnade Hotel with the other events that happened in 1912. The Colonnade had been owned by Crump up until he was able to complete the sale of it in 1910.
Carr begins;
Some few years ago, a dozen Philadelphia golf enthusiasts met in the Colonnade Hotel to discuss the project of establishing a golf course in the Jersey sands. They felt that the few summer months, during which the clay soils of the Philadelphia region keep in condition for playing golf, are not enough to satisfy those golfers who are truly fond of the game.
They desired a course where there would be practically no closed season throughout the year. In discussing the problem, they had the seaside in mind, chiefly the region about Atlantic City; but the great distance from Philadelphia, and the extreme difficulty of securing a suitable location, caused the project of a seashore course to be dropped.
The region outside of Camden was searched in all directions, until, finally, Mr. George A. Crump discovered a perfectly wonderful bit of golf land at Sumner Station, on the Atlantic City Division of the Reading Railroad, thirteen miles outside of Camden.Finally, by 1982, Tillinghast was long since dead, so I'm not sure how Shelley could have possibly either verified or ruled out what Crump may have told Tillinghast personally back on a train ride in around 1910??
Tom, since you apparently have the Shelley book, what exactly about that photograph is stated that either dates it, or indicates its location, or otherwise proves Tillinghast's first-person, contemporaneous reporting untrue?
Surely from what's been provided here of Shelley's book, now that the clarifying and curiously missing paragraph has been provided, Shelley surely didn't seem so sure.