Merion's Early Timeline

[Mike_Cirba]

Tom Paul,
I understand where you are going.

Bryan,

I think you'll have everything you need shortly and if you don't by the weekend my offer stands.

Thanks again.

[TEPaul]

Bryan:

I don't want to take any conversation private. We can do it on here then if you want to. I'm just interested to know exactly how you managed to come up with almost identical incremental acreage results in Post #1140 that I did back in Posts #652 and #656. If you did it in some method fairly independent of my numbers we may have something really interesting here but if you used my numbers, even one of them, to sort of back into your lines in that aerial, particularly the old Johnson boundary at the top of the "L" then this might not be quite so conclusive as I think it could be.

Let's see if we can proceed here without getting sidetracked by David Moriarty's increasingly hysterical posts, OK? He probably senses he has a lot to lose here and might try to divert things as he has always done on these threads. This isn't about him, it's about getting to the bottom of Francis's story, where it happened, how it happened and perhaps when within a particular timeframe between Dec. 1910 and July 21, 1911.

[DMoriarty]

We all understand where TEPaul is going Mike.  He is trying to take the conversation to the back room so he can try and control and manipulate the information before it is made public;  It is the same thing he does whenever anyone comes close to admitting that I have a point with any of this stuff.   It is also the same thing he has done with me, on numerous occassions . . .
 -  One time he made up a fictional Canadian researcher and asked me to send all my work and ideas to the two of them for vetting before I posted anything. You know, to help me!
-  After my essay came out, he offered to work with me privately without anyone else involved.   This was especially despicable because he threw is own writing partner under the bus in the process (I was helping Wayne at the time.)  By the way, he threw you under the bus too - but these guys do that all the time in private - but throwing Wayne under the bus and insulting his intelligence and abilities in the process?   That was too much for me.

The point is, TEPaul cannot handle transparency because transparency exposes the dual weaknesses of his position -- his shoddy analysis and the lack of factual support for such.    We'd all be a lot better served if these conversations remained in the open.

______________________

Bryan,

Why would you help him unless he gives you the publicly recorded information?

[John_Cullum]

I just don't understand the importance of all of this land acquisition detail. No one disputes that the club acquired the land necessary to build the course. How many transactions it took just doesn't matter.

How does any of this relate to whether McDonald should be given more credit than he gets?

[DMoriarty]

John,

To put it as simply as I can:

1.  According to Francis, at the time of the land swap, Merion knew how first 13 holes would fit on the property, but they were having trouble fitting the last five holes.

2.  The land swap allowed them to fit the last five holes and resolve this dilemma.

3.  So at the time of the land swap the course had at least been routed and they had some idea of how the holes would fit on the land.


[I think we all generally agree with the above.  Now for he controvercial part:]


4.  Multiple sources (including Hugh Wilson's account) indicate that Hugh Wilson was not involved the project until early 1911, and the first verifiable evidence of his involvement was a  February 1, 1911 letter.

5.   If the land swap occurred BEFORE Hugh Wilson became involved in the project, then Hugh Wilson could not have been involved in determining the initial routing.   

That is it. 

The reason that it is discussed so much is that they desperately need for the land swap to have happened while Hugh Wilson was working on the project.   Otherwise, he could not have possibly been the driving force behind the routing and hole concepts.

As for my theory, it is an interesting issue, but based on what else I now know not much would change about my theory regardless of when the land swap took place.   I don't think they realize this yet, and probably we will never get to this point where they have to, given that it looks as if the swap occurred before Wilson was ever involved.

Hope this helps.

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

What do you think it means if Bryan comes up with the exact same numbers as TePaul WITHOUT having the Metes and Bounds, but by simply following the agreed-upon Timeline?

Would you see any significance to that??

[TEPaul]

"How does any of this relate to whether McDonald should be given more credit than he gets?"


JohnC:

Have you read his essay carefully? He gets that swap back before Lloyd bought the land, before Francis was even appointed to do anything at Merion and yet everything from MCC points to the fact that swap idea took place AFTER Lloyd bought the land and after the Wilson Committee (including Francis) was appointed. That is one of the reasons the land acquisitions (two deeds over seven months) and all the things that took place in that timeframe such as the Wilson Committee report and what happened in that 4/19/1911 board meeting really do matter. Francis' idea and the swap is certainly one of the things that matters in this vein.

[JESII]

Tom,

If Lloyd was the majority owner of the Haverford Development Corporation by the middle of 1910, and the HDC owned all this land, why do you keep insisting on the transfer date of December 19 1910 for his assumption of ownership? Frankly, I think it matters not one bit if he was chariman of MCCGC after it was established when he also had every opportunity to make certain decision on the land before that date as well...why in the world would he have re-capitalized HDC if not to control this transaction?

[TEPaul]

"We all understand where TEPaul is going Mike.  He is trying to take the conversation to the back room so he can try and control and manipulate the information before it is made public;"


David Moriarty:

I have no problem whatsoever having any conversation on here with Bryan, including discussing with him how he came to the same results last night I did over a week ago. I'd be glad to have that conversation on here so all, certainly including you, can see it and consider it carefully but if you try to sidetrack that conversation between me and Bryan on here with the kinds of posts you've been making constantly in the last few days I will take it private so Bryan and I can accomplish something here without having you trying to continuously deflect or distort it. If he really did come to the same results last night I did over a week ago without using my numbers but his own method it occurs to me all the various events along this particular time line really are talking to us if only we let them. If this is true we will both list what they all are and I think everyone's understanding will become a whole lot clearer about what really did go on with Francis and Lloyd and that swap, where, how and even when (within a particular timeline).

Don't worry, I certainly know you are nervous about having your assumptions and the premises of your essay overturned by some of this; at this point I think most already know that worries you but this right now isn't about you or your essay, it's only about getting to the bottom of this Francis land swap, where-all the swap happened, how and when.

The choice is yours.  

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
If Lloyd was the majority owner of the Haverford Development Corporation by the middle of 1910, and the HDC owned all this land, why do you keep insisting on the transfer date of December 19 1910 for his assumption of ownership?"


Sully:

I am not saying Lloyd was the majority owner of HDC in the middle of 1910 or any other tim; or even an actual owner in HDC. He had hardly gotten involved by the middle of 1910 but by Nov. 1910 he (and apparently his MCC syndicate) could've had a form of control with HDC in perhaps one of 2-3 ways or some combination thereof. 

1. He could've provided the recapitalization mechanisms and wherewithal for HDC to take their stock cap from the $100,000 it had previously been to $300,000 by around Nov. 1910 (after all that was his day job on a very large scale---eg financing and stock underwriting).

2. He and his syndicate could've provided HDC with a ready made residential client base and infastructure funds---road building etc (in fact that is exactly what did happen when one looks at who ended up buying a majority of those lots over time).

3. For reasons such as the above which are pretty obvious from the documentary material surrounding MCC and Merion, the fact is HDC needed Lloyd big-time the way he took all this on and for that reason alone there was no reason at all for HDC not to give him control of that 161 acres for those seven months when Wilson and Committee set about routing, designing and beginning to build the course between Dec, 19, 1910 and July 21, 1911 when Lloyd turned the land of Merion East back over to MCCGA.

[John_Cullum]

Another minor point. $7500.00 seems like a hell of alot of money for 3 acres in 1911 (or thereabout). The rest of the land was around $800.00 per acre. What's the story on that?

[TEPaul]

"Another minor point. $7500.00 seems like a hell of alot of money for 3 acres in 1911 (or thereabout). The rest of the land was around $800.00 per acre. What's the story on that?"


JohnC:

No, the average per acre price to HDC for the entire 338 acres was around $1,600 per acre (338x$1600=$540,800).

MCC through Lloyd got HDC to drop 117 acres of the 338 for the course to a bit less than half the per acre average cost (117x$726=$85,000)

The remainder of the 338 acres  (338-117=221 acres) was priced at $2,500 per acre (221x$2,500=$552,500)

total cost to HDC of 338 acres=$540,800

Total sellout of the 338 acres=$85,000+552,500=$637,500

[JESII]

Tom,

I thought you implied, or said outright, several times through all of this that HGL had his cash in the game with HDC, is this the case or not?  Providing a mechanism is wholly different from jumping in...

[TEPaul]

JohnC:

The following really is the meat of Moriarty's "theories" about Merion and the Francis Land Swap story. When you begin to really consider his "theory" in the light of all the other factual evidence surrounding it I think you will clearly see why we say what we have and why we say his "theory" is truly fallacious!





"4.  Multiple sources (including Hugh Wilson's account) indicate that Hugh Wilson was not involved the project until early 1911, and the first verifiable evidence of his involvement was a  February 1, 1911 letter.

5.   If the land swap occurred BEFORE Hugh Wilson became involved in the project, then Hugh Wilson could not have been involved in determining the initial routing.  

That is it.  

The reason that it is discussed so much is that they desperately need for the land swap to have happened while Hugh Wilson was working on the project.   Otherwise, he could not have possibly been the driving force behind the routing and hole concepts."



JohnC:

Multiple sources, including Hugh Wilson's own account DO say Wilson's Committee was NOT formed until the beginning of 1911. Matter of fact, those multiple sources never talk about just Wilson, they all and always talk about Wilson and his ENTIRE committee!! None of them were appointed until the beginning of 1911. Francis was on Wilson's committee! There is no evidence anywhere or at any time that points to Francis doing ANYTHING for MCC before being appointed to that Wilson Committee in the beginning of 1911. Francis himself, in the rest of his story, even explains he was 'added to' Wilson's Committee.

David Morarty says in #5; "If the land swap occured BEFORE Wilson became involved, then Wilson could not have been involved in the routing."

JohnC, come on, can't you see what's going on here with some truly tortured logic by Moriarty?

"IF the land swap occured BEFORE Wilson became involved???


THAT is one MIGHTY BIG "IF" JohnC! And Moriarty has been trying any conceivable way he can for a year to make that MIGHTY BIG IF look a whole lot like some FACT!! Well it just isn't; never was! And a real fact is there is not a single SHRED OF EVIDENCE ANYWHERE or AT ANY TIME that Francis was out there in 1910 AND before he was appointed to the Wilson Committee!!!

I have asked Moriarty a good dozen times on this thread alone IF he can produce ANY EVIDENCE at all from anywhere that Francis was out there in 1910 before being appointed to the Wilson committee in the beginning of 1911, and each and every time he ignores the question clearly refusing to answer it because he knows as well as the rest of us THERE IS NO EVIDENCE of that and there never has been.

All Moriarty used was the fact that that triangle appears on that Nov. 15, 1910 land plan and he uses ONLY HIS OWN INTERPRETATION (he refuses to consider anyone elses") of what Francis' MEANT BY his description of the 130x190 dimension, and that his description FITS that triangle on that Nov. 15, 1910 land plan and so the whole thing must have been created BEFORE Nov. 15, 1910!! It does nothing of the kind!! That triangle on that Nov. 15, 1910 land plan can't even be accurately measured anyway because two sides of it are "APPROXIMATE" anyway, even by Moriarty's own recent admission. And not just that but the actual area out there that creates that description was clearly just added onto what was obviously an area a bit too narrow on their working topo contour maps to fit the 15th green and 16th tee up into as they are today. The way this was all done was not by the creation of that entire triangle but by the redelineation of the entire Golf House Road that created the entire fix for THE LAST FIVE HOLES that Francis mentioned in his story too!

This whole Francis thing in his essay is a tortured logic guise to slide Francis back ahead of his committee timeline to make it look like Wilson wasn't even involved in the routing or hole designs, that he was a total novice and therefore someone like Macdonald/Whigam or Barker must have done the majority of the routing and design or whatever with a little help from Francis and Lloyd. 

For Christ Sake, all three of them were only at Ardmore for one single damn day in June 1910, if that; Barker never returned and Macdonald/Whigam did not return to Ardmore for ten more months until April 6, 1911.

John, are you beginning to get the picture now of how a real revisionist essayist with a preconceived conclusion (Wilson was too much the novice so M/W must have done it for them even if M/W didn't even have the time and were probably never even asked to route or design anything) tried to pull the wool over everyone's eyes apparently figuring no one would really analyze the timeline of events that really does exist FACTUALLY in MCC's and Merion's records from back then between 1910 and 1911?

[TEPaul]

Sully:

I never said Lloyd had his own cash into HDC even though in some ways he may have such as fronting MCC the $30,000 on the $85,000 purchase price of the 117 (HDC) acres along with that so-called syndicate that apparently acted early on for MCC as "guarantors." As for the residential component, I doubt Lloyd wanted to be a residential real estate developer but it looks like he and his syndicate also may've been into that too as far as being a vehicle for raising money to make it all happen for HDC and MCC. But there are a number of ways for a man like Lloyd to have had effective control over an organization like HDC was in there than just putting his own money into HDC the corporation. The thing that probably motivated him most, at least in my opinion, may not have even been MCC but his own Allgates that he had just bought the original land for in 1910. It was directly across the street from all that HDC land. But the point is there was obviously a very good reason Lloyd took 161 acres into his own name for seven months for MCC. Clearly HDC needed him, as did MCC and that's why it happened the way it did on both sides of the proverbial fence.

[TEPaul]

Cuylers was on the board of governors of MCC and he was MCC's lawyer.

[TEPaul]

"As for my theory, it is an interesting issue, but based on what else I now know not much would change about my theory regardless of when the land swap took place.   I don't think they realize this yet, and probably we will never get to this point where they have to, given that it looks as if the swap occurred before Wilson was ever involved."



Well, that sounds like a precusor to even more egregious rationalization, dismissing and ignoring of facts to come than Moriarty has engaged in his essay and during the last year on here.

The fact is if Francis' land swap idea happened when the Wilson Committee was working on routing and designing the course in the winter and early spring of 1911, and in that Dec. 1910 to July 1911 timeframe that we claim it pretty much had to happen and did happen there goes Moriarty's premise that Wilson wasn't part of it and with that premise there goes the rest of his premises built on that first premise and there goes the rest of his essay including the conclusion that M/W (and Barker ) must have been the routers and designers or the driving force behind Merion East because Wilson wasn't even on hand in 1910 to do it!   

His essay, his logic, his fundamental premises and his conclusion about Merion East on here is a total house of cards and if one card falls all the rest will too!  But the real trouble here isn't just that, it is why it is taking him so long to understand this and/or admit it?

[DMoriarty]

Jim, 

TEPaul has had so many conflicting theories about H.G. Lloyd that even he cannot keep track.  Of course he said that H.G. Lloyd controlled the HDC long before Fall of 1910.   He later said they were 99% certain that H.G. Lloyd controlled HDC as of December of 1910.   He also said that H.G Lloyd controlled the land for the golf course from for 7 months.    None of this is true. But that never stopped Tom.

Now he is apparently backtracking but not fast or far enough.    Lloyd did not control the land in any real world sense.  He was simply bridging the deal.    I've never seen any evidence that Lloyd controlled HDC, then or ever. 

_____________________________

Remember how when TEPaul quit for a day how productive this thread was?   I suggest we get back to discussing Facts.  Since TEPaul will not divulge the facts to which he has access.  There is no place for him in such a conversation.

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

As your supposed facts are disproven one by one, your tone is becoming increasingly shrill and desperate.

Let's see what Bryan and Tom's exercise produces because this posturing is so past redundant by now.

Why not go answer my. NGLA question?

[TEPaul]

It really doesn't matter what any of us thought about any of this stuff a year or two ago as Moriarty thinks it does. All that matters is what we know now and how accurate it is. This entire thing has been a fascinating learning process to me. Only that it could be the same for David Moriarty. Unfortunately, he is still stuck on what he thought two years ago even though most all of it has been proven wrong by now. Can he admit it? Apparently not!

[TEPaul]

Cuylers was MCC's lawyer, not HDC's lawyer. In explaining to MCC's president Alan Evans that Lloyd was taking 161 acres into his own name for HDC he was telling MCC not HDC. What he apparently meant was Lloyd was taking 161 acres of HDC land into his own name for MCC for seven months so he could move boundary lines around on the golf course. Plus they didn't actually have to pay HDC for the land until apparently the next July.

[henrye]

JohnC:

Multiple sources, including Hugh Wilson's own account DO say Wilson's Committee was NOT formed until the beginning of 1911. Matter of fact, those multiple sources never talk about just Wilson, they all and always talk about Wilson and his ENTIRE committee!! None of them were appointed until the beginning of 1911.

Tom, do you have an exact date for the formation of the committee?  Early 1911 could be Jan2 or April 2 or anything in between.

[TEPaul]

"Tom, do you have an exact date for the formation of the committee?  Early 1911 could be Jan2 or April 2 or anything in between."


HenryE:

I do not. I can't see where the Wilson Committee was formally appointed. By that I don't mean the Wilson Committee wasn't appointed just that I can't see where they were FORMALLY appointed such as an appointment or mention at the board level. I think it may've been what we call an "ad hoc" committee working under the permanent standing Golf Committee which was always represented at the board level. Wilson was a member of the Golf Committee too. However, at clubs like that generally only the chairmen of permanent standing committees attend board meetings with the rest of the board of governors.

But we have Wilson's own words that the Wilson Committee was appointed in the beginning of 1911 and the first actual written evidence of his committee work is a Feb. 1, 1911 letter from Wilson to Russell Oakley with a copy enclosed of one of those topographical contour maps they were apparently using in their routing and design process. Wilson expected Oakley could use it to give him agronomic advice about the over all turf on the farm.

Apparently the way David Moriarty thinks since that Feb. 1, 1911 letter from Wilson to Oakley is the first physical evidence we have of Wilson at work on his committee that MUST MEAN Wilson was doing nothing BEFORE Feb. 1, 1911. That's some pretty strange logic, don't you think? 

Feel free to call me if you have many more questions HenryE. 

[DMoriarty]

Mike Cirba,

Not surprisingly you don't understand the difference between "shrill and desperate" and bored and annoyed. 

I forgot to address this question;

 

David,

What do you think it means if Bryan comes up with the exact same numbers as TePaul WITHOUT having the Metes and Bounds, but by simply following the agreed-upon Timeline?

Would you see any significance to that??

As I understand it, TEPaul's theory outlined in the posts he references proves nothing at all, or at least not anything about the Francis land swap.    But he's got more than one theory and they are conflicting, so who knows. 

I have no idea what the "agreed-upon Timeline" means.   I haven't agreed upon a time line.   

[TEPaul]

Mike Cirba:

Moriarty's answer doesn't surprise me at all. I wouldn't expect him to understand what that excercise on Post #s, 652, 656 and 670 means, and even if he did have some inkling the last thing I would expect him to do is admit what it may mean.

What do you think it is looking like it is starting to mean?

Again, I just think it is very interesting that last night Bryan essentially arrived at the same incremental numbers I did over a week ago without saying anything to me about it. What those actual incremental numbers are and what they mean is the key here. And if Bryan never actually used any of my numbers to do his drawing in post #1044 and he came in with the same incremental numbers on that drawing I did in my excercise in 652, 656 and 670 this is probably telling us something pretty important, at least where the only area is this swap could have happened.

But still even with this interesting development the one "asset" we still don't have which could explain all of this is one of those working topo contour maps (blueprints) the Wilson Committee was using to route and design in the winter and spring of 1911. With that we would be able to see precisely all up and down Golf House Road where this land swap and purchase took place.