Here is a paragraph from the Baker recollection, from TomM's post.
Once home Crump paid a visit to Brown Mills, where he thought of building a golf course. Then with the same object in view he went to Absecon, where the present country club is located. In Absecon he found the mosquitos so many and vicious that he decided it would not do. He came back to Merchantville and started to buy the ground at Sumner station, which was later changed to Pine Valley. He paid $50.00 for most of it, and for some ground paid $100 per acre. He secured the right-of-way from the Ireland property for a road one hundred feet wide for about ninety-nine years and in the old days that is the way we came to Pine Valley - by way of Watsontown.
People will make of it what they will, but while Baker describes Crump going to check out the other two sites, there is no mention of Crump searching for the PV site, or going to inspect the site, or of him having discovered the site during this time period. Just that he "came back to Merchantville and started to buy up the ground at Sumner station." It is almost as if Baker thought of Sumner station as part of Merchantville, as if Crump went and looked at two sites elsewhere, and when they didn't work out he came home and went with the local, familiar spot.
Obviously nothing dispositive, but it sure doesn't seem to be written as if the PV spot was totally foreign to him and he he had just discovered it. But of course because it is not dispositive you guys don't even want to hear it, I am sure.