I mean no offense, but my take on this is that having followed most if not all the years of debate on these matters, the "basic" ideas and concepts of the chronology and progression of the land acquisition, the site visits by Mac and Whig and Barker's prelim, and the "laying out" or "routing" and the subsequent voyage by HIW to "study" the great holes, which has always seemed likely to have taken place in the context of first constructing the bones and planting the turf, is nothing new! I believe that I for one had written this same understanding from trying to match all the conversant sides posts long ago.
In a way, I am like Ran in expressing incredulity that all this back and forth bickering about fractions of the general chronology is a fart in a windstorm in the sense of who should be 'given credit for the creation of Merion'.
At the end of the day, and IMHO as has been expressed between the lines and between the back and forth points of the debaters, it has always been evident to me that Merion was a COLLABORATION of many. I don't see Mac and Whig, nor Barker for his earliest part, as having stood there waving arms directing the laborers as a matter of on-going supervision to adhere to their original routings to build the course expressly according to design ideals that were undoubtedly on an on-going 'as-built' basis. Nor do I see Wilson doing so on a daily basis, but at least as leader of the construction committee during 1911-1912 and into 1913, he surely was the one that had access to go out to the site often to oversee the laborers adhering to original routing plans. Whose plans, again, as has been gleaned from all the debate between TEPaul, David Moriarty, Tom MacWood, and others adding pieces of evidence, a general routing by the Barker, MacD, Whig, collaborating, and study and tweaking during and after basic construct and grow-in by Wilson who was learning on the fly and adding playing hazards and features after the basic construction, always to be understood as an evolutionary process to continue to make the course, "one of the best of its kind".
Finally, I don't think any of these men had a qualm in their time about how the "credit" was being doled out by these subsequent reports and recalling of their individual roles. They all seemed proportionately effusive or generous of praise to each other's roles, while noting their own or brother's or associate's roles. I didn't see any of them getting into a tizzy about the subsequent recounts of events as they were told in 1912-1926 reports, etc., nor the eulogy to MacD.
What will happen 100 years from now about some of the modern courses that were designed/built by 'entities'? Will some architects say, I laid out the course on paper according to topos and a construction companies say, we had so many change orders and did so much tweaking of the plans, that we basically did the lion's share of the final design project? Could some day debaters even argue that well known GCAs of our time, were not the one primary to bringing in the guts of various courses because their associates did the lion's share of the on-site and on the ground work? Look at a Nicklaus design. How much is Jack, and how much is someone else's "real" work? Sure the big guy's name is on the door now. But, will really fanatical GCA buffs in 2100 say that so-and-so was well known to be the guy on site that really brought the design in. In that context, controversy will always reign... if we let it.
Thus, it is time to put the debates to rest, and recognise collaboration when we see it. A group of mover's and shakers back in the day, of a certain sporting genteel kind, well healed and able, in pursuit of a relatively new recreational game with an associated social component, got together to build their dream course and club, and they all were happy about it.
PS: BTW David, my tone might be misunderstood, I want to say that the part 1 is a wonderful piece of writing. Thank you, and thanks to all the others who write with passion to explain their views.