The likes of Herbert H. Barker, Willie Campbell and Robert White....

[John Kirk]

If Country Slaughter is in the Hall Of Fame, then Keith Hernandez should be there too.

Keith Hernandez is my pet peeve selection for the Hall.  A unique player and a great fielder.  He's also in the one of the all-time great sports commericals.  "Reeeeee-jected!  No play for Mr. Gray."

[wsmorrison]

John,

Interesting.  I didn't realize it til you mentioned it, but they have remarkably similar offensive stats.  Slaughter was a much better base runner. 

I always considered Hernandez a tier below Hall of Famer.  I guess Slaughter really doesn't belong then, either.  Slaughter was very controversial in his social views and was truly of an era that thankfully has passed by.  The few times I met him, he was a lot of fun and told some great baseball stories.

[TEPaul]

It seems the original holes of Myopia Hunt Club were not laid out by Willie Campbell, as has been suggested. thread.

It seems the original holes were laid out beginning in March 1894 ('when the winter snow melted') by three Myopia Hunt Club members, R.M. Appleton, "Squire" Merrill and A.P. Gardner. The club records even describes most of these first nine holes. The club record also describes these three "partners" footing it over the terrain staking out tee and green sites. The recording of the club Secretary at that time, S. Dacre Bush, describes the proceedings of the club that led to the laying out of the nine hole course.

The holes were in play within three months and by the beginning of July, 1894 two tournaments had been held on them. TCC's scratch golfer, Herbert Leeds won both of them. In 1896 Leeds would join Myopia as well.

It also seems likely that Willie Campbell and his most interesting wife Georgina (most interesting in the early history of women in American golf) may not have even arrived in the country at that point.

It's mentioned in a few accounts that Willie Campbell may've been at Myopia Hunt for a brief time but the club has no record of that (it appears both Willie and Georgina may've taught golf itself at a number of these early clubs simultaneously).

Myopia does record that Robert White was the pro/greenkeeper there in those early years and was followed by long-time pro/greenkeeper John Jones whose name is attached to a part of the course "Jonesville" to the right of #10.

Robert White went on to a distinguished career in golf and architecture in America. His resume includes being one of the founders of the PGA and the ASGCA.

[DMoriarty]

Moriarty,

You are a sick little man.  Only you could take an innocent post and twist it into something less than humane.

Relax Wayne.  This is the 21st Century.   There is nothing wrong with you having an innocent "man crush" on William Flynn.   It's actually kind of sweet.  Plus it explains quite a lot.   For example I now have a better idea why you keep your "book" so tightly guarded, and how it could measure 2000 pages with more being added . . .

Dear Diary,

I know I should be sleeping, but I just cannot get him out of my mind. He is just so cute, and those bunkers are to die for.   So much better than those yucky straight edged things that the other boys were doing.  They are just so . . . so . . .  natural, as if sent from heaven for me alone.  Dreamy.  But he is so misunderstood it makes me scream!!  And I just don't understand why that nasty old Charlie Macdonald is so popular.  It's just not fair!  My William has more talent in one of his masculine yet delicate fingers than that old meany had in his gross old wrinkly body.  Total yuckiness! 

And it is not just his courses.  Captain of the  golf, basketball, baseball and football teams!  Can you imagine!  Is there anything he cannot do perfectly?  He is the perfect man.   I heard he even rode a steed from course to course . . . sitting majestically on that huge beast, commanding his crew, ever blade of grass in place.  It makes me shudder just thinking about it . . . .

Just kidding of course.  As you know I don't have a copy of your diary-- I mean book.  So if the above is at all accurate, it is just dumb luck on my part.   

Seriously, you really shook Keith Hernandez' hand?  Keith Hernandez?  The baseball player?   Wow.  He is such a great player.  Was it a perfect shake?  Single pump, not too hard?

[TEPaul]

"I mean, never in the history of golf course architecture has so much energy, passion, emotion, and time been expended over so very little."


Mr. Cirba and Master Pissboy:

Nevertheless, Herbert H. Barker should certainly be considered the second best architect in America in 1910. Please tell me you've figured at why at this point.   

[TEPaul]

My Dear Fellow GOLFCLUBATLASERS;

As of seventeen seconds ago I have herewith added the name of Robert White to the title of this thread.

Unlike Willie Campbell, Robert White is mentioned in the Myopia history book by Edward Weeks.

Thankfully for White he lived longer than 1900 which unfortunately we cannot say for poor Willie Campbell (who died in that year at 38 of what his grandson thinks might have been cancer), and he did not leave America and go home again feeling disrespected as did H.H. Barker in 1914.

Robert White stuck it out over here and made a name and reputation for himself and lived to the respectable age of 85, finally expiring peacefully with a pipe in his mouth in Mrytle Beach, S.C.. In the process he was one of those who formed the PGA and the ASGCA.

He also designed Longue Vue in Pittsburgh which is an excellent course and that's no hyperbole.

Robert White was at Myopia in and around the years 1895-97 serving as the pro/greenkeeper at least. At the moment, I am looking into whether he was one who may've helped Mr. Parker wind up Herbert Carey Leeds to make him tick architecturally.

I believe Robert White may've gotten his architectural hands on Myopia too, at least to some degree because there is a general contour to #12 green that absolutely SCREAMS Robert White to me!

If anyone would like me to describe in detail this Robert White signature architectural feature I would be positively delighted to do so.

[Allan Long]

The name Willie Campbell piques my interest as I have been trying to find out information about him in regard to his work on a course in town, and I have had little or no luck in verifying anything.

One of the things that is frustrating about finding information on architects from this era is that there are not a lot of sources for information, and when there is, often the information is conflicting.

To give an example, a Willie Campbell is given credit for designing a local muni in 1898. If it is indeed the Campbell of TCC fame, the timeframe could be right, but I have never found any other info that TCC's Campbell ever made it out this far West. However, according to C&W, a Willie Campbell did do work on the course, but in 1910. Obviously, with TCC' s Campbell dead by then, if there really was work done in 1910 it couldn't have been him. There are mistakes in C&W, but who's to say what is right in this respect. I have never found any information about another Willie Campbell other that TCC's, so the frustration continues.

[TEPaul]

Mr. Long:

If you're interested why don't you try calling information in or around the town of Moultonboro, New Hampshire for the name Bob Lamprey. He's Willie and Georgina Campbell's grandson and apparently his dedicated biographer. He claims Campbell was essentially the originator of public golf in America, including having so much to do with Franklin Park in Boston. Or you might try Franklin Park to see if they can put you onto a guy named Brian DeLacey.

As Mr. Cirba said, Willie Campbell and early guys like that could lay out a course in a day or so and if someone wanted to pay him about 25 bucks and his train trip out west from Dorchester Mass. I don't see why he wouldn't have done it.

[Thomas MacWood]

The name Willie Campbell piques my interest as I have been trying to find out information about him in regard to his work on a course in town, and I have had little or no luck in verifying anything.

One of the things that is frustrating about finding information on architects from this era is that there are not a lot of sources for information, and when there is, often the information is conflicting.

To give an example, a Willie Campbell is given credit for designing a local muni in 1898. If it is indeed the Campbell of TCC fame, the timeframe could be right, but I have never found any other info that TCC's Campbell ever made it out this far West. However, according to C&W, a Willie Campbell did do work on the course, but in 1910. Obviously, with TCC' s Campbell dead by then, if there really was work done in 1910 it couldn't have been him. There are mistakes in C&W, but who's to say what is right in this respect. I have never found any information about another Willie Campbell other that TCC's, so the frustration continues.

Allan
There were two Willie Campbells who were involved in golf design - one from Boston and one from Philly. Based on the timing it appears Patty Jewitt was the product of the Philly Willie.

[Allan Long]

Thanks, Tom.

That makes sense since there is nothing I could find of TCC's Campbell ever being in Colorado. I'll see if I can find anything on the Philly Campbell being here. All these Campbells.....

[Thomas MacWood]

You know, I have much empathy for the forgotten names and voices of the past, for the people and (worse by far, the entire races of people) whom history and historians have ignored and diminished, leaving their stories untold and their accomplishments and aspirations unrecorded.  In a less significant and more personal way, I also have some first hand experience with this, as a first generation Canadian and son of working class Italian immigrants (themselves the sons and daughters of generations of poor farmers, making a life off the hillsides in the south). They came here with nothing and worked with their hands. My maternal grandfather's name is nowhere recorded, but I can go to churches througout the city and see the stone steps that he crafted by hand and chisel and made beautiful and lasting; or I can visit homes in the downtown core where my paternal grandfather, a man in his 60s and just new to the country, had years ago dug deep underneath the foundation walls and then crawled under those foundations flat on his stomach, inch by inch burrowing along and moving away the earth with his hands so he could place the jacks there that would eventually lift the entire house up so the walls could be underpinned. His name is recorded nowhere. (They were Giancarlo Sampogna and PietroAntonio Pallotta.)  All of which is to say, I tend to have (and always have had) a temperamental and emotional interest in the underdogs and in the quiet and seemingly insignificant people of the world; for example the old working class Scottish professionals who came to America at the turn of the last century, probably penniless and alone, and who tried to eke out a living and a life with their skill alone, as they had no connections and no power and no one who owed them anything. (On the other hand, the closest I've ever come in my life to meeting and knowing people of wealth and social standing and significance is here on this website  ) In short, I would very much like to know about men like Willie Campbell.  I would like to hear about what they might have thought and felt and struggled with and achieved.  But there is a problem, because there is a difference -- or so it seems to me -- between a Willie Campbell and my grandfathers, and that is, while no one ever praised and promoted their work, I can still go see my grandfathers' work and touch it and admire it as a job well done (the church's stone steps and the 150 year old house with a basement that was dug out of the earth by hand) -- whereas with Mr. Campbell, as far as I can tell, there is little of his work left to see and even less to admire. I won't even say that this should discredit him or make him a less worthy subject of study. But it does seem a bit strange that, given this, a modern day interest should arise that is not satisfied with remembering and acknowledging him, and recounting and recording the long-gone and forgotten testaments to his working life, but seems determined to jump way further and way higher, insisting without much in the way of substantiation that in fact it was he who designed one of the great and historic clubs of all times and not the rich man who'd always been credited with devoting much of his life to it. Somehow, while the attempt is clearly to raise-up the reputation of someone like Campbell, it actually seems to diminish him -- almost as if, to use an analogy, I were to claim that my maternal grandfather not only chiselled the stone steps of the church, but actually designed and built the entire church itself. And if I did claim that, it would seem to suggest that I wasn't proud of my grandfather himself and proud of what he actually did, but instead was only concerned and proud about the image of him that I'd  created for myself. It reminds me of the recent thread about historians/biographers, and about what I dislike about much of the biographies written today, i.e. so few writers seem able or willing to write about their subjects with simplicity and modesty, and thus to honestly potray an individual -- and limited --  human life; instead, every match the subject participated in has to be the greatest match the world has ever seen, every scientific insight the subject ever had has had to revolutionize our understanding of ourselves, every decision seems to have had to change the world as we know it forever. It's as if the subject that these biographers are interested in and presumably have come to admire and respect would not be worthy of a biography unless the biographer be allowed to wrap any narrative and speculation he choses around them.  The result is that the subject himself/herself is lost, and only the biographer (and his career) remains. 

Peter     

Peter
Are you under the impression Campbell did not design the first nines at Brookline, Essex and Myopia in 1894?

[DMoriarty]

The name Willie Campbell piques my interest as I have been trying to find out information about him in regard to his work on a course in town, and I have had little or no luck in verifying anything.

One of the things that is frustrating about finding information on architects from this era is that there are not a lot of sources for information, and when there is, often the information is conflicting.

To give an example, a Willie Campbell is given credit for designing a local muni in 1898. If it is indeed the Campbell of TCC fame, the timeframe could be right, but I have never found any other info that TCC's Campbell ever made it out this far West. However, according to C&W, a Willie Campbell did do work on the course, but in 1910. Obviously, with TCC' s Campbell dead by then, if there really was work done in 1910 it couldn't have been him. There are mistakes in C&W, but who's to say what is right in this respect. I have never found any information about another Willie Campbell other that TCC's, so the frustration continues.

Allan, are you referring to the Town and Gown Golf Club in or around Colorado Springs?  Great name.   Anyway I found an old article that said that W. Campbell, previously of Philadelphia Country Club was the professional there in 1899.  The article was written before the course was even open, so I suppose he is probably the designer.   

IM me your email and I will send it.

[TEPaul]

Allan:

If you'd just bother to check immigration records of Ellis Island, New York you can't help but notice in the 1890s and 1900s Scotland sent a couple of hundred Willie Campbell clones over here. They were all given the name Willie Campbell and sent out into all regions of the New World including the wilderness of the midwest and west to make their way in the artforms of golf course architecture and condom manufacturing. This was the land of opportunity in those day, you know? The top brass at Golf Architecture Central Command in St Andrews (GACC) felt that all regions of the New World needed a Scottish Willlie Campbell.

H.H. Barker was actually just a temporary reconaissance agent for GACC who overstayed his mission here and consequently became disrespected on both sides of the Atlantic. Therefore, GACC's MPs caught him and pulled him back home in 1914 so he could get messed up in WW1.

This was the salad days of the Great British Empire, and it worked in both glorious and mysterious ways. Essentially it spanned the globe with the exception of New Jersey. Apparently GACC saw no opportunity in New Jersey with its dangerous collection of "Wise Guys" like Tony Soprano and Pat Mucci's great grandfathers who were actually golfing partners at a course designed by Herbert Leeds that is NLE at this time.

[Thomas MacWood]

You know, I have much empathy for the forgotten names and voices of the past, for the people and (worse by far, the entire races of people) whom history and historians have ignored and diminished, leaving their stories untold and their accomplishments and aspirations unrecorded.  In a less significant and more personal way, I also have some first hand experience with this, as a first generation Canadian and son of working class Italian immigrants (themselves the sons and daughters of generations of poor farmers, making a life off the hillsides in the south). They came here with nothing and worked with their hands. My maternal grandfather's name is nowhere recorded, but I can go to churches througout the city and see the stone steps that he crafted by hand and chisel and made beautiful and lasting; or I can visit homes in the downtown core where my paternal grandfather, a man in his 60s and just new to the country, had years ago dug deep underneath the foundation walls and then crawled under those foundations flat on his stomach, inch by inch burrowing along and moving away the earth with his hands so he could place the jacks there that would eventually lift the entire house up so the walls could be underpinned. His name is recorded nowhere. (They were Giancarlo Sampogna and PietroAntonio Pallotta.)  All of which is to say, I tend to have (and always have had) a temperamental and emotional interest in the underdogs and in the quiet and seemingly insignificant people of the world; for example the old working class Scottish professionals who came to America at the turn of the last century, probably penniless and alone, and who tried to eke out a living and a life with their skill alone, as they had no connections and no power and no one who owed them anything. (On the other hand, the closest I've ever come in my life to meeting and knowing people of wealth and social standing and significance is here on this website  ) In short, I would very much like to know about men like Willie Campbell.  I would like to hear about what they might have thought and felt and struggled with and achieved.  But there is a problem, because there is a difference -- or so it seems to me -- between a Willie Campbell and my grandfathers, and that is, while no one ever praised and promoted their work, I can still go see my grandfathers' work and touch it and admire it as a job well done (the church's stone steps and the 150 year old house with a basement that was dug out of the earth by hand) -- whereas with Mr. Campbell, as far as I can tell, there is little of his work left to see and even less to admire. I won't even say that this should discredit him or make him a less worthy subject of study. But it does seem a bit strange that, given this, a modern day interest should arise that is not satisfied with remembering and acknowledging him, and recounting and recording the long-gone and forgotten testaments to his working life, but seems determined to jump way further and way higher, insisting without much in the way of substantiation that in fact it was he who designed one of the great and historic clubs of all times and not the rich man who'd always been credited with devoting much of his life to it. Somehow, while the attempt is clearly to raise-up the reputation of someone like Campbell, it actually seems to diminish him -- almost as if, to use an analogy, I were to claim that my maternal grandfather not only chiselled the stone steps of the church, but actually designed and built the entire church itself. And if I did claim that, it would seem to suggest that I wasn't proud of my grandfather himself and proud of what he actually did, but instead was only concerned and proud about the image of him that I'd  created for myself. It reminds me of the recent thread about historians/biographers, and about what I dislike about much of the biographies written today, i.e. so few writers seem able or willing to write about their subjects with simplicity and modesty, and thus to honestly potray an individual -- and limited --  human life; instead, every match the subject participated in has to be the greatest match the world has ever seen, every scientific insight the subject ever had has had to revolutionize our understanding of ourselves, every decision seems to have had to change the world as we know it forever. It's as if the subject that these biographers are interested in and presumably have come to admire and respect would not be worthy of a biography unless the biographer be allowed to wrap any narrative and speculation he choses around them.  The result is that the subject himself/herself is lost, and only the biographer (and his career) remains. 

Peter     

Peter
Are you under the impression Campbell did not design the first nines at Brookline, Essex and Myopia in 1894?

[TEPaul]

Mr. MacWood:

Here's a pretty straight forward question for you and it will be interesting to see if you can actually answer it without some diversion of counter question.

Are you aware of anyone who is under the impression that Campbell designed the original nine holes of Myopia, other than you?

And secondly, can you even remotely desribe where those original holes were or what they were?

Thanks, Mr. MacWood; I look forward to straight forward answers to two straight forward questions.

[Thomas MacWood]

The last I checked the number was just over 100, and growing everyday.

Yes. I have a complete description of all the original nine.

[TEPaul]

"The last I checked the number was just over 100, and growing everyday."

Mr. MacWood:

Great. Would you agree to mention who a few of them are so they could be asked to provide specific evidence of it or would you still prefer to withhold that information from me or the club too, as it might actually help us consider it?

"Yes. I have a complete description of all the original nine."

OK. That's great too. Would you mind explaining where those original holes were (tees and greens) and what they were in detail? I think this site would be interested in that or do you figure that might help someone too?

[Thomas MacWood]

TE
You may be unaware but I made a pledge never to help you or anyone associated with you. Unfortunately you'll have to find another sucker to conduct research for you.

[DMoriarty]

TEPaul,

I think you should just take his word for it.  After all that is what you ask us to do with you and Wayne, and his track-record is infinitely better than yours.   

Also, why don't you just level with these clubs.  Tell them that because of your incredibly rude, obnoxious, and dishonest behavior over the past decade, you have alienated many if not most of those who are willing and able to do the type of research these clubs need if they want to get to the truth about their courses.  And also tell them that you have notified everyone generally and some of those researchers specifically that the only way anyone will ever communicate with these clubs is through you and your good graces.

[TEPaul]

Mr. MacWood:
Are you aware of anyone who is under the impression that Campbell designed the original nine holes of Myopia, other than you?

"The last I checked the number was just over 100, and growing everyday."



Mr. MacWood:
Great. Would you agree to mention who a few of them are so they could be asked to provide specific evidence of it or would you still prefer to withhold that information from me or the club too, as it might actually help us consider it?

“TE
You may be unaware but I made a pledge never to help you or anyone associated with you.”



Mr. MacWood:
No, I’m not unaware you’ve made a pledge to never help me or anyone associated with me; you’ve said that a number of times recently. Does that mean you have selected people you’ll show whatever it is you’ve got about Campbell and Myopia and selected people you won’t share it with? Have you actually shared with those over 100 and growing group what the evidence is or are there over 100 and growing who are just taking your word for it in your estimation? How about Myopia, are you willing to share that information with them? If not one certainly wonders why you have been mentioning this on here for the last few weeks. After all, it’s their golf course, their history. Why would anyone not want them to consider solid evidence on their own architectural history? This is a most interesting “methodology”, as you call it; you do research on a club’s course and yet you’d prefer they don’t see it or consider it. Most unusual indeed! Are there any other “expert” researchers like you out there who use your amazing methodology---eg who do this new expert research on the history of a club's course architecture and then refuse to show it to them? I'm trying to imagine how that works, Mr. MacWood?

[Allan Long]

Allan:

If you'd just bother to check immigration records of Ellis Island, New York you can't help but notice in the 1890s and 1900s Scotland sent a couple of hundred Willie Campbell clones over here. They were all given the name Willie Campbell and sent out into all regions of the New World including the wilderness of the midwest and west to make their way in the artforms of golf course architecture and condom manufacturing. This was the land of opportunity in those day, you know? The top brass at Golf Architecture Central Command in St Andrews (GACC) felt that all regions of the New World needed a Scottish Willlie Campbell.

Tom,

If I only had your connections to get that valuable and pertinent information all those sleepless nights could have been avoided. Maybe if I ever get invited back to the East coast I can experience all that crucial Willie data first hand. First all those different Bobby Jones guys, now this. 

[Rich Goodale]

According to my Great Aunt Rhoda of Winchester, Willie Campbell is an ancestor of the Groundskeeper-Campbells of Springfield.  Perhaps one of the current generation of Groundskeeper-Campbells can log in and clarify this before it comes to blows.

[TEPaul]

Rich:

One of the grandsons of Willie and Georgina Campbell seems to act as their unofficial biographer. He appears to be attempting to turn her house in a little town in New Hampshire into a museum of sorts. In the broad scheme of things golf in America it was Georgina that left the real mark. She survived Willie by over a half century and the LPGA or just women professionals in golf in America may consider her their patron saint or should. She was a ground-breaker.

Yes, according to an old Myopia man whose recollections go back the fartherest there are a pretty good number of Willie and Georgina Campbell's family in and around Boston, some still connected to golf.

Be sure to thank Aunt Rhoda.

[DMoriarty]

According to my Great Aunt Rhoda of Winchester, Willie Campbell is an ancestor of the Groundskeeper-Campbells of Springfield.  Perhaps one of the current generation of Groundskeeper-Campbells can log in and clarify this before it comes to blows.

Thanks for the tip.   I contacted two of Mr. Campbell's long lost relatives in Springfield, Willie MacMoran, who is indeed a groundskeeper and maintenance man, as well as his cousin,  and Billy Campell who is sort of a groundskeeper (he mostly digs graves at the  local cemetery.)   They did not have information on their great, great grandfather, but they did send me a photograph from an old family album.   

I can't quite read the caption, Rich, but it seems to have something to do with someone named Leeds . . . .