New York Times Archive 1851-1922

[Tim_Cronin]

I have stumbled upon something all the rest of the group may have known, but I did not. The 1851-1922 portion of The New York Times's internet archive is available for free, rather than for a fee. The Times' website notes that all articles from that era are in the public domain. The paper charges from 1923 forward, with some exceptions. (And the entire archive, from Day 1 to yesterday, is searchable, with the first paragraph displayed, so something from 1927, say, can be located. Handy if you have a nearby library with the Times on microfilm, whether or not the library has the printed index volumes.)
In other words, here's a completely indexed source to golf, both for the immediate New York area and, to some degree, beyond.
Selected stories are loaded to your computer as a PDF as they originally appeared in the Times.
Right now, I'm reading a story from May 11, 1919, quoting Donald Ross thusly: "In this country there seems to be a desire for length. The result is that we see layouts 6,500 yards long, and some of them will not begin to compare with courses a thousand yards shorter. The number of really fine three-shot holes in this country can be counted on your fingers, while there are hundreds of splendid one and two shot holes."
Proof that some things never change.
Enjoy!

[Tony_Muldoon]

Tim, most interesting - can you provide  a link?

[Rich Goodale]

Tony

Go to nytimes.com.  At the top of the page, see "Search" then use the drop down menu to get the 1851-1922 data base.  I must warn you, it's addictive.....

Ricardo

[Dan Kelly]

I must warn you, it's addictive.....

Ricardo --

What isn't, that's worth doing?

Danno

[Phil_the_Author]

Tim,

It is a wonderful resource. I have found that one has to, at times, be creative in how one conducts searches though.

For example, if you type in "Tillinghast" you will get references to far too many Tillinghast's that lived in the country during his day. And yet one sometimes has to follow this very approach and weed through al the chaff to find the wheat.

A good example is an article from the summer of 1936 (can't remember the exact date of-hand). Even though the article refers to A.W. Tillinghast as such, it will only be found through the search engine by using the generic "Tillinghast" and spending time going through them all. This can be both time-consuming and quite expensive, but doing serious research requires it.

Why do I cite this article? Because in it the writer refers to Tilly's latest designs at Bethpage and the magnificent Black Course that he created. It was written about a month and a half after the course opened, and the name Burbeck doesn't appear anywhere... 

[Rich Goodale]

I must warn you, it's addictive.....

Ricardo --

What isn't, that's worth doing?

Danno

Everything that the bad guys did on Hawaii 5-0.  Look 'em up, Danno....

[Dan Moore]

Searching using the term golf links got three hits between 1880 and 1889.

The same search returned over 1,700 hits for 1890 to 1899. 

I intially tried to search using the single word golf and it brought up way too much clutter including articles with the word gulf instead of golf.

Anyone have an idea how accurate these digital search engines are on the scanned documents? 

[Peter Pallotta]

They seemed to have re-jigged the process recently. Until about a year ago, they offered a 'membership' for about $15 dollars a month that let you search/find any article headline back to 1851, and then to read the whole article and then down-load the pdf - to a maximum of 100 articles per month. None of the articles was free, even the ones from before 1923, but if you saved the full 100 articles you weren't paying much on a per-article basis. But a few months ago I cancelled that membership. I don't know if they still offer it, but now the articles before 1923 are free, but for anything after that it's about $3 to download (at least, that's what I could make out). The only trouble seems to be that you have to pay that amount before you can see the article in its entirety (i.e. past the headline)...and from past experience, when you get an entire article the pleasant surprises are kind-of matched by the unpleasant ones.

Like I say, I'm not sure I've understood the new process correctly. But that monthly membership was a good deal (I think) in comparison so I wanted to mention it.

Peter

[Tim_Cronin]

Philip, Dan – I noticed the search broadness too. Typed in "golf" to find the earliest mention, and up came hundreds of entries for close spellings, including a guy named Goff who ran in some AAU track meets. The earliest mention of the game I found was in 1892 or so for a soiree in Southhampton, but, as usual, Moore has trumped me!
By the way, I search using quote marks on the assumption that if I simply search for, say, Tom Bendelow, I'll get every story with Tom and Bendelow in it, even if it isn't the architect. But "Tom Bendelow" narrows it to you know who.
And addictive is the word. Between this and GoogleEarth...

[Dan Moore]

Tim,

If only the Inter Ocean and Evening Post were digital.  Despite the flaws this beats the microfilm room at the Harold Washington Library. 

[Tim_Cronin]

At least the copies are free!