Has anyone prior heard of the "Land Improvement Company" syndicate made up of the men described?
Mike Cirba:
Of course we have. The MCC original syndicate that became involved with HDC's 338 acres were the men from Merion mentioned in that article. We have the very same reflection in MCC's records.
"Another question...were the Haverford Development Company and the Land Improvement Company the same entitty?"
As it had to do with the 338 acres we are considering (which I believe was the entire assets of HDC) it is the very same thing as what Evans referred to as "the Land Improvement Company."
"If Lloyd, Griscom, and Lesley were part of the syndicate owning the entire 338 acres, weren't they by definition all working both sides of any transaction between HDC and MCC?"
Yes, they probably were but the fact, reflected in many MCC records, is that Lloyd was doing ALL the negotiations with HDC for them and for MCC. Even the MCC board meeting minutes mention that FACT. Then one needs to understand Lloyd himself, who he was and what-all he was doing in that area.
Would you like me to explain some of that to you because it most definitely DOES bear on our understanding of all this back then around Merion. I realize David Moriarty may pooh-pooh any of this related information because to defend his fallacious contentions on here, particularly the timing of the Francis land swap he necessarily has tried to keep the discussion extremely limited and has tried not to allow into the discussion related events and facts that help explain all of this and very likely WHY that swap did not happen when he says it did. He did the same thing with Francis's story. Didn't you notice HOW he tried to keep the discussion CONTAINED to JUST Francis's remark about the dimensions of that triangle and HIS INTERPRETATION of it?
He does not want the rest of Francis's story to be discussed and considered on here because if it is the rest of it essentially makes his contention make no real sense at all that the land swap happened BEFORE Nov. 15, 1910 and not AFTERWARDS!
And WHY did he feel the need to move Francis's land swap story back BEFORE Nov. 15 1910 even though there is not a single shred of evidence ANYWHERE to support that? Because if he didn't do that there would be no possible way at all for him to explain WHY that triangle shows up on that Nov. 15, 1910 land plan, would there?
I believe and I have believed for a year that the rest of the participants on here are not understanding this subject very well simply because they were not aware of and still apparently are not aware of the larger tapestry of events that were going on around the creation of Merion East that directly help explain EXACTLY what happened, WHEN, WHY, HOW and BY WHOM!!
As long as Moriarty tries to limit this overall understanding and dismiss or ignore or rationalize away the entirety of all this the longer it will take others who've not been familiar with it to understand what really did happen.
And of course the end of the tunnel on this is we will all learn that Macdonald and Whigam (or Barker
) did not route and design the holes of Merion East and they were NOT the 'driving force behind it' as his essay suggests and he keeps contending on here. We will see that Wilson and his committee did all that back then with some help and advice at first from Macdonald/Whigam for which they thanked them directly and refected that in their own records. But their records also reflect in much more detail what Wilson and Committee actually did in the winter and spring of 1911.
Amazingly that particular material information was in an attic at MCC apparently not looked at for a century and none of us knew it was there UNTIL after that essay came out on here!! What that additional information found at MCC less than a year ago effectively DOES is completely confirm what Merion's history has said all along about Wilson and his Committee and Merion East and West courses!
And why was that important material found at MCC still over there and not at Merion G.C. today or at any time? Obviously, because there never has been any REASON to question who originally designed and created Merion East! That was never before questioned BY ANYONE until two guys came along on THIS WEBSITE about 3-6 years ago and began questioning it off an article or two that happened to mention Macdonald/Whigam helped and advised MCC back then.
I guess they must have thought they discovered something noone knew, including Merion.
THEY DIDN'T and us here including Merion G.C. have always completely understood that!!
Merion always knew this and apparently the reason these two people thought they discovered something previously unknown is because those two people DID NOT KNOW MERION's history hardly at all back then (one of them actually called it all "a PUZZLE"
) so how could they have known Merion always knew this about Macdonald/Whigam's help and advice for four days over about a year back then and what the details of it were (and Merion's recorded history reflected it)?