Merion's Early Timeline

[TEPaul]

"I confirmed this when I was trying to gain access to the records."


Then don't just SAY it SHOW me WHERE you CONFIRMED this! I went over to MCC about 5-6 years ago with a member from MCC and asked them about any records they might have pertaining to Merion East. I spoke to the secretary and the General Manager of MCC. We spent about three hours over there discussing it and the General Manager said he just didn't think they had anything from the Merion golf courses left over there.

However, I found out about a month ago through a cousin of mine who told me she just happens to be the vice president of MCC that as of the last year or so MCC has started a dedicated and budget program to cateloque, inventory, preserve and perhaps present in the clubhouse all their old records. That might help explain HOW Wayne and two others from Merion G.C. AND MCC were able to find what they did less than a year ago.

You expect me to believe YOU knew any of this? When you start straining everyone's credulity like THAT, I think there is some pretty good cause to call you a liar for what you CLAIM now you said about knowing those records were at MCC.

DEDUCING something like that from California is definitely NOT the same thing as claiming you KNEW IT. For God's sake, I DEDUCED the same thing about 5-6 years ago otherwise I wouldn't have gone over there with the member of GMGC and MCC looking for anything over there about the Merion golf courses.

You want any semblance of cooperation from Merion or MCC or us here who have access to this material because we took the time and made the effort to track it down? Well, then, you better start doing a whole lot better then trying to feed any of us crap like that!

[TEPaul]

"Nope, it's because Francis said so to the extent that his contribution resulted in the location of the 15th green and 16th tee...which freed up the entire upper 5 holes."


Sully:

Have you too not yet figured out that Francis never said in his story WHEN that land swap idea of his happened?

[JESII]

Exactly!

[TEPaul]

"I know you can, but are you going to?"


Bryan:

Using a survey map blueprint done in 1928 and assuming the base of the original triangle for the course as built was 130 yards wide (What I believe it is when walking it as well as assuming it was as a reflection of what Francis said it was in his 1950 story about the fix he was responsible for on #15 green and #16 tee, the base of that narrow triangle that was the result of the land swap between MCC and Haverford College 1928 is 26-28 yards wide. All of this matches what I walked off on the ground a couple of weeks using these very same dimensions. I did say from the top of the old triangle to the corner of the Haverford College ground was over 300 yards, remember? 

That dimension is about 190 yards today because Club House Road is now a dedicated road. I must say I was pretty surprised that it was 120+ yards from the club's property line behind 16 tee to College Ave. I guess I always felt that way because I've driven it for so many years and never actually walked it off before BOTH ways.   

[TEPaul]

Sully:

Exactly what? Are you now finally beginning to figure out THAT it not only did not have to happen before Nov. 15, 1910 but also WHY it did not have to happen before Nov. 15, 1910? If you have figured that out at this point I would call it some distinct progress in understanding what really did happen out there back then! 

And if you are just beginning to figure that out I surely would like to know why you think you used to think it HAD to have happened BEFORE Nov. 15, 1910.   

[DMoriarty]

Thanks for the suggestion.  Can you tell us the source of these directions?  Do you have a survey map from that era?

The directions came off survey attached to documents relating to the 1928 land swap between the college and MCC that freed up more area east of the 16th tee. 

I do have a copy of the surveyors map, but the map does not provide the coordinates of the corner.   It does reference a surveyors stone at the intersection of the private property, the college property and the MCC property, but doesn't give the coordinates.   I don't have all the documents in front of me, but will double check later.  Maybe the coordinates are in a related document.

The first part of the instruction is hard to do on the Google map since the border between the road and the property to the east is obscured for the most part by trees.  But it looks hard to follow the border on that heading.  A heading of 26 degrees 06 minutes looks to align with the property line. 

The heading is 24 degrees 06 minutes.   Was this a typo on your part or did I get it wrong earlier?
_____________________________________________

TEPaul,  as I said before I am not getting into where I got my information about what MCC had.   I don't want to subject any innocents to a witch hunt like in the Pine Valley fiasco.   

___________________________________________

This thread has digressed remarkably over the past day.


TEPaul,  you were going to lead us on a FACT BASED discovery of why my analysis in post 501 was demonstrably false.      If my red line is not perfectly accurate, then just use the real western border of he Johnson farm, north to a line extending from the southern border of the college property.

When will your factual analysis begin?    First, we should have the facts, don't you think? 

[JESII]

Tommy,

I have known all along that nothing has proven when it "had to have happened"...fortunately you now understand as well that just because Thompson asked for approval of A swap in April 1911 that Francis didn't necessarily think of his swap that week and ride over to Lloyd's place to get an 'attaboy' from him...

[TEPaul]

"Tommy,

I have known all along that nothing has proven when it "had to have happened"...fortunately you now understand as well that just because Thompson asked for approval of A swap in April 1911 that Francis didn't necessarily think of his swap that week and ride over to Lloyd's place to get an 'attaboy' from him..."


Sully:

In my opinion this is what a "timeline" is all about. We have no real idea when that Francis Land Swap idea happened but we are pretty much dead convinced that it had to have happened within a particular TIMELINE for numerous reasons we've been providing on here for a long time. Can you imagine at this point WHAT the time parameters of that timeline are?

We just do not believe that it makes any sense at all to try to take this Francis land swap event back earlier than a number of other known and recorded events such as Lloyd's Dec. 19, 1910 deed, Cuyler's letter to MCC president Evans, and then obviously logically ended before April 6, 1911 which was when Macdonald and Whigam came back to Ardmore and reviewed those plans and said what they did about the last seven holes of the one that would be presented to the board on April 19, 1911. At that point Francis's idea was reflected in a formal resolution asking for approval that land ALREADY PURCHASE for land adjoining and that three additional acres be purchased for $7,500.

If the land swap had happened a month or more BEFORE Lloyd took title to that land AND before Cuylers letter then it would've been reflected in the survey topo maps Wilson and committee was using in the winter and spring of 1911 but it wasn't and that is why the board considered it necessary to resolve to approve of that land adjustment AFTER Lloyd bought that land. They would have to as three months later in Lloyd's transfer of 120.1 acres to MCCGA (three acres more than MCC agreed to buy in Nov. 1910 those boundaries were going to have to come out set between the golf course and the development to the west and that is why Cuylers also asked president Evans in his Dec. 19, 1910 letter to TELL him WHEN the boundaries were definitely determined so they could be set and metes and bounds determined on the transfer in July 1910 back out of Lloyd's name!

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

Since we're supposed to be trying to change the tone here, can I request we leave Wayne Morrison out of this.

Sorry Mike, but no.  Wayne may be letting you guys do his talking for him but as far as I am concerned he is very much part of this conversation.  He is the source of all your information, and as recently as last week I was told that if I wanted my questions answered I needed to grovel before Wayne's good graces.  I bring him up to set the record straight.   My tone in doing so has not been hostile or insulting, although I do admit that I am perplexed that I have been attacked for a year using secret information, yet I explained all this to Wayne about a year ago.  And Mike, my dealings with Wayne in the past are not alleged.  Could you refrain from implying that Iam a liar unless you are going to back that up?   Thanks.

And yet you complain that the tone here has deteriorated again today?

If it were up to Wayne, both Tom Paul and I would be completely ignoring you, and not providing your or your research with a single bit of cooperative information.

He thinks if we stop responding to you that you'll have no real credibility left with anyone who matters.

The idea that either of us are speaking for Wayne or on his behalf is ludicrous.

[TEPaul]

"Tom, would you agree that the following statement is true:

The idea a transaction always precedes the transaction itself."


Shivas:

Sure I would but since you consider yourself to be some kind of wordsmith or sentence structure expert I would suggest you write that more clearly to convey what you really mean such as "The idea for (or of) a transaction always precedes the transaction itself."




"Would you agree that the following statement is also true:

The idea for a transaction can occur a relatively long time before the transaction is closed or a relatively short time before the transaction is closed, or any time in between?"


Of course I would, but in this particular case there are a number of other known and recorded events and dates that indicate that land swap could not have or would not have occured before.



"If so, I must be missing the reason why the idea for the swap could not precede the actual swap itself by a relatively long period of time.

Is there, in fact, a reason?"


We believe there are a number of reasons, at least three in fact, and we have given them to you before but apparently you continue to fail to understand what they mean regarding the time (TIMELINE) within which Francis's story would pretty much have to fall. But as I've told you before it is just so hard for some of us here to ever understand what people like you who have never known ALL these factual details understand or appreciate at any particular time.

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom and Mike,

There may well be other facts to come forward, but your stranglehold on the "APPROXIMATE ROAD LOCATION" for width measurement purposes is astounding. I guess there are some inaccuracies of scale on that 11/15/1910 land plan, but the fact that the road drawn clearly says "approximate" should be your clearest clue to not use it to measure the width of that area...You have based your entire argument against the timing of the Francis deal on the width of the "APPROXIMATE ROAD"...how is that possible?

You guys have speculated alot on here about alot of things, so speculate for me why in the world this group of very smart guys would waste 3 acres in a proposed purchase on an area unusable for golf (because it was to narrow)? They wouldn't. theyknew they wanted to put the 15th green and 16th tee up in that corner when they hired the surveyors to draw up the plan for the membership...there is absolutely no other logical sequence of events...

Jim,

Like David, I believe you're trying to have it both ways in your argument.

You state that since it's an "Approximate Location of Road" we therefore have to discount what it actually measures and represents on one hand and then you say that the fact some triangle shaped land exists along the road on that VERY SAME  map proves the Francis Swap for 130x190 of land HAD to have happened before that map was drawn..   

Yet, that's not what that triangle measures at all...in fact, it's about 95, maybe 100 yards wide and 300 yards long!!     That's 73% x 157% of what Francis stated the dimensions were.    THAT'S pretty F*cking approximate, don't you think!?     

It wasn't "3 acres" as drawn on the 1910 Land Plan, and I believe they THOUGHT it was wide enough...after all, you SHOULD be able to fit two parallel holes in that width.

The problem is that they didn't plan it right because (I speculate, admittedly) the quarry down below wouldn't let them get two parallel holes in down there, so they had to widen things at the top.

That's why I tried to provide those aerials a few days ago showing where the real bottleneck occurred because of the need to provide an alternate route on the right side around the quarry on #16 during the days of Hickory shafts.

And honestly, Jim...to state that we have based our entire argument against the Francis Land Swap happening before November on the wdith of that triangle is simply untrue.

What about the other items Tom has brought forward, such as MCC meeting minutes clearly stating that the routing was still being worked on by the Committee the entire period up to April 6th, 1911, or the fact that Merion didn't even purchase the property (through Lloyd) until December 1910, or the fact that the news article I produced today from 11/24/1910 stated that the land had been purchased and now would be "laid out" by Barker, which means it COULD NOT have been routed before then.

I know you're trying to be fair here, Jim, and give David a fair hearing, but I'm not hearing anyone, including David, even address these FACTS.

[JESII]

Mike,

Yes, that's it, I think it was a very approximate sketch of the road placement based on the simple fact that a green and a tee were going up there...if they didn't have any golf layed out up there, why would they allocate 3+ acres of an already tight property to it?

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike,

Yes, that's it, I think it was a very approximate sketch of the road placement based on the simple fact that a green and a tee were going up there...if they didn't have any golf layed out up there, why would they allocate 3+ acres of an already tight property to it?

Jim,

That's the point.

The course was NOT laid out yet.   Yet, someone had to lay down some initial boundaries for the Purchase that could be reconfigured later as needed. 

Where are you getting your "3 acres" figure from?

[JESII]

300 yards multiplied by 100 yards then divided by two to get 15,000 square yards...or about 3.1 acres...

How is it that you see the triangle's presence in Nov. 1910 as proof that they didn't have a golf course laid out yet?

That, to me, is the ultimate proof that they knew they were going to use that area for golf holes...what am I missing?

[Mike_Cirba]

300 yards multiplied by 100 yards then divided by two to get 15,000 square yards...or about 3.1 acres...

How is it that you see the triangle's presence in Nov. 1910 as proof that they didn't have a golf course laid out yet?

That, to me, is the ultimate proof that they knew they were going to use that area for golf holes...what am I missing?

Jim,

Without getting into geometric proportions, wouldn't the land need to be rectangular for that acreage calc to be accurate?   That's not important, though...

The only reason that area is a triangle is because Haverford College and the property above it were not part of the Johnson Farm that they purchased, which ran all the way to College Avenue, and because someone decided probably for aesthetic reasons that Golf House Road would be long, sweeping, flowing curves.

I'm sure based on looking at the property that they wanted to use land north of the quarry from the get-go.   

Go up and stand on the 16th tee and tell me that they would have missed THAT opportunity when they already really owned the land in question through Lloyd's dealing on both sides of the table....that instead they would have only simply looked to buy land up to the middle of the 15th fairway, a mere 65 yards beyond the quarry as David is suggesting.   That instead, sometime later after they had already laid out 13 holes and were quickly running out of room they did a big oopsie and said, oh boy, how could we have been such a stupids! 

In theory, and as the map was drawn, they could have gone all the way up to College Avenue for those holes because that's where the Johnson Farm land ran to.   

[JESII]

Mike,

300 yards multiplied by 100 yards is 30,000 square yards...divide that in half (to create this rough triangle) and you get 15,000 square yards...which is 3.1 acres.



When did David suggest they only bought land up to 65 yards above the quarry?

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike,


When did David suggest they only bought land up to 65 yards above the quarry?

Jim,

David told us that the original 117 acres they purchased was included within the red (a very "Selective" and "movable" portion of the Johnson Farm) and blue (the Dallas Estate) lines;



Can you get to the 1908 map of the property before Merion bought it?

I've tried to copy it here but the document is protected.

It's much easier to illustrate what I'm talking about if we can get that up here.

[Mike_Cirba]

Shivas,

There's pretty big gap between two days and 10 months.

Of course, perhaps they just blew the top of the quarry off with dynamite on land they didn't own back in June 1910...or maybe for their 4th of July celebration.

[Mike_Cirba]

Of course, perhaps 40 years later what stuck in Francis's mind were simply the overall dimensions of what he needed in total to fit those holes better up there...

No...its more plausible that he forgot the difference between two days and 10 months!

[JESII]

When did HDC buy the Johnson Farm?

When was the actual quarry taken out of service?

[Jeff_Brauer]

More importantly, when does the record say construction began? I know that has been mentioned on the previous thread, and forgive me, but I have forgotten

[Mike_Cirba]

Jeff,

Construction began shortly after 4/19/1911.

Jim,

Lloyd and Merion took control of the HDC land formally Dec 19th 1910, but had control of it by Nov 15. 1910.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim,

I'll see what I can find on the Johnson Farm purchase when I get home.

Have you looked at the 1908 map yet?

[Mike_Cirba]

Guys,

Ask yourself two questions...

What's the first thing Francis and Committee did after the land swap?

What does that tell you about what they were trying to accomplish with the swap?

[TEPaul]

"When did HDC buy the Johnson Farm?"

Sully:

Technically HDC never did buy the Johnson Farm or take the property into the name of HDC. It was sold by the Johnson family to Gebhard Fecht on 2/21/07 for $1.00 and then transfered the same day for $48,000 from Fecht to the Philadelphia and Ardmore Land Company. The next transfer was from The Philadelphia and Ardmore Land Company to James Rothwell 12/16/1910 for $1.00 and then three days later 12/19/1910 to Horatio Gates Lloyd et ux (and wife) for $1.00. We basically call those $1.00 transfers "paper transfers" because the stipulation to make a legal real estate transfer is that at least $1.00 must be exchanged to consititute what's called "consideration" to make a legal real estate "contract."

Obviously the Philadelphia and Ardmore Land Company was a previous name of what essentially became the Haverford Development Company that was registered in Pennsylvania in June 1909 or perhaps some of the same people or else just a corporate buyout by the HDC people.

As you can see The Philadelphia and Ardmore Land Co. paid $343 and acre for the Johnson Farm and basically some of the same people sold it four years later for $726 and acres which happened to be half the price of what HDC agreed to pay per acre for the remainder of the 338 acres which was the whole lot controlled in the end of 1910 by HDC other than the 21 acre Dallas estate that they finally got control of about five days before Lloyd took the deal for the golf course that he alone had negotiated with Connell to the MCC board for approval of a purchase of 117 acres (96 acres of the Johnson Farm and the 21 acre Dallas estate) for the land for the new Merion East course.

However, when Lloyd transfered 120.1 acres over to MCCGA Corp in July 1911 it included the 21 acre Dallas estate and 99 acres of the Johnson Farm instead of the 96 acres MCC agreed to in Nov. 1910. MCC and Lloyd (HDC) agreed to an "exchange of adjoining land between HDC and the new course AND to buy three more acres with that Thompson resolution on 4/19/1911 and they agreed to pay $7,500 for it ($2,500 per acre) which happened to be the per acre price for the remainder of the HDC land agreed to by Lloyd and Connell in the beginning of Nov. 1910.

Hope that explains it all.



"When was the actual quarry taken out of service?"

I have no idea at all about that.