Yahnundasis

[Jim_Kennedy]

Here's a provocative article that says "...while Mr. Travis laid out the general scheme of the course, it was Mr. Sherman who gave his time and attention to the hundreds of details which in the end mark the difference between a mediocre and a high class course."

Sherrill Sherman was the Green Committee chairman and a close friend of Travis'.

http://www.fultonhistory.com/Process%20Small/Newspapers/Utica%20NY%20Daily%20Press/Utica%20NY%20Daily%20Press%201924.pdf/Utica%20NY%20Daily%20Press%201924%20-%202891.pdf#xml=http://www.fultonhistory.com/dtSearch/dtisapi6.dll?cmd=getpdfhits&u=fffffffffc8ff646&DocId=12176433&Index=Z%3a%2fFulton%20Historical&HitCount=2&hits=ce+cf+&SearchForm=C%3a%5cinetpub%5cwwwroot%5cFulton%5fNew%5fform%2ehtml&.pdf

[Randy Thompson]

Neat course, good article, I worked there summer of 77 on the maintenance staff, lots of memories, three months then seems like three years now!

[Mike Cirba]

I'm sensing that Joe Bausch's discovery of this Fulton County website might just set the architectural world on its ear.

Great stuff!

[Tom MacWood]

Jim
Thank you for sharing this info.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Here are excerpts from a notebook written by Charles T. McCarthy, a lifetime employee of the Yahnundasis Golf Club. He gives himself a lot of credit for building the course (definitely an Irishman   ) and he doesn't seem to share the same opinion about Sherrill Sherman that was found in the newspaper article. The entire chronicle of his time at the club can be found here:  
http://www.newhartfordpubliclibrary.org/Tally%20Ho-02.htm

In the spring of 1922 Mr. Wheeler, a building contractor, had finished his contract in building the addition to the point school in New Hartford and had taken the contract for building the new club house. He was from the north country. Mr. Walter J. Travis, Garden City, NY, honorary member, was the architect for the present golf course. He had supplied the blue prints for the golf course and stakes were driven for the location of tees and greens. In 1922, in early spring, Mr. William Tull of 68 Orchard Place, Bloomfield, NJ, Mr. Travis; construction expert, was sent to the Yahnundasis to stake out the greens to elevation and to get the work started. I was sent to work with Mr. Tull. An ad was put in the paper for men. About 35 were hired for hand labor and three teams of horses for grading. Topsoil had to be removed at the location of each green seven inches deep and according to the size and specifications on the blueprints before the greens could be staked to the elevation. The first green staked to be built was number eleven. Mr. Tull and I worked together for three days. At the end of the third day he said,
"McCarthy, I must leave you tonight. You are the man picked out to build this golf course. I have other courses under construction that I must give supervision on. I will leave you written instructions on how to keep the men and teams of horses at work and refer to the blueprints about the work you have to do. I will see you again in the two weeks. I will leave my address in Bloomfield, NJ in case you would like to get in touch with me."
In the month of June after having number thirteen and fifteen greens completely finished and ready for the stolons to be planted for grass, we had three days of heavy rain. The water in the crick went over its banks and over the thirteenth green which was completely washed out. I had to restake and rebuild number thirteen with much damage done to number fifteen. There was no refill soil to be had around number thirteen. It all had to be shoveled by hand into a wagon from another place and brought to number thirteen by horse and wagon. In planting stolons on a putting green for grass it required a lot of hand work by men with shovels. A small portion of land had to be staked out and inside of these stakes the men had to shovel so many yards of rich soil, so many yards of rich muck, and then spread so many bales of peat moss and a certain amount of fertilizer and thoroughly mix. After standing for a certain length of time a layer is spread on a putting green, then a layer of chopped stolons which were covered with another layer of germinated.
One day while at the eighteen green which was all graded to a finish, Mr. John E. McLoughlin, president of the Yahnundasis Golf Club, approached me and said,
"Charlie, this green is too close to the club house and must be moved father away."
That meant leveling the green again and restaking to elevation father away which meant a lot of extra work. While cutting the trees through the swamp area the fourteen and fifteen fairways were coming together. Mr. Walter J. Travis, Architect from Garden City, NY had to be called in to straighten things out. Mr. Thomas M. Sherman who was a member and a popular golfer, winner of many events and a very good friend of Mr. Travis was called in on that day by brother Sherrill to meet Mr. Travis. Mr. Thomas M. Sherman, Mr. Sherrill Sherman, Mr. William J. Tull, Mr. Walter J. Travis and myself walked around the back nine discussing the building of the golf course and that gave me a chance to talk with Mr. Travis who at one time was New York State amateur champion and the first non-Britisher to win the British Open. He also won the first Yahnundasis tournament in 1909. I remember meeting Mr. Travis at that time.
In 1909 the club had a clam bake. souvenir beer mugs were made for the occasion, enough for everyone. I wonder how many are around today. I have a pair as nice as the day they were made.
In 1924 Mr. Tull became a golf course architect on his own with an office in Greenwich, Conn. In May, 1924, I received a letter from him saying he had a contract to build a golf course in the Thousand Island, Alexandria Bay. He had the land surveyed and stakes were driven in the locations for tees and greens and he had the blueprints ready. He wanted to know if I would be interested in building the golf course. He stated the wages and said all hotel and traveling expenses would be paid if I accepted. Because it was better than I could do at the Yahnundasis, I accepted. By the end of the season I had nine holes completed.
___________________________________________________________________________
I have spent the most part of my life working for the club and I was always interested in the work that I had to do. If you would care to look over some of my work, play the back nine on the Yahnundasis golf course. And I was also happy to know and see and be able to speak of such players as Gene Sarrazen, Walter Hagen, Joe Kirwood, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Helen Mays and other who played on a golf course that I had built. I am only speaking for the back nine which is professional. The front nine is still immature as I have been told by a man who has spent many years working on the course. I have talked with two important members who said that they had given supervision on the location of one green each.
________________________________________________________________________________
In later years Mr. Sherrill Sherman was employed by Roberts Hardware. One day I met him in the Utica Post Office and to be friendly, I said hello. Mr. Sherman turned and said hello as if he did not know me and then turned away. I approached him a second time and said, Mr. Sherman, don’t you remember Charley McCarthy at the Yahnundasis Golf Club?"
He said, "I don’t recall ever seeing you before", and he asked in a friendly way, " Why should you say that you do know me when you don’t know me?"
I could never forget those words. I thought it was so funny for Mr. Sherman to make a remark like that to me that I had to get it on paper so that others could read it. I know that in Mr. Sherman’s younger life he was rated as a pretty fair golfer. I have a picture of Sherrill and his brother Tom when they played in the club team in the year 1909, and also of Sherrill in the Iroquois team of 1924. I also remember in the year 1922 when we had the back nine under construction, he made the remark to me that he would not know how to handle a shovel full of dirt. I always believed that he had told me the truth.
I have the full page clipping that was in the Daily Press on April 22, 1924 announcing the formal opening of the new club house and golf course, which was on my birthday.

[JC Jones]

Does anyone have any proof that power equipment was not used?

[Jim_Kennedy]

JC,
The man's complete remembrance is full of instances where they used horses for most everything they did around the property.

In one section that I didn't post he talks about going to meet a large steamroller with the draft horse to help pull it along the muddy road that led to the course. He said they used the roller on the fairways every spring to flatten them out. The horse was so scared of it that he bolted when he saw it.

I don't think he mentioned any other machines.

[Jay Flemma]

And this is why we have to be really careful not to put too much weight into these news articles.  They may be written by homers.

Out of curiousity, Jim, why the sudden interest in the Yahnundasis?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jay,
Why not?

[Jay Flemma]

Well it's an obscure course and suddenly you have quotes from the Observer-Disgrace - the only newspap[er in the US to ever capitulate so badly to political correctness that they ran an entire page pf the paper in Bosnian so the immigrants could read it, but no one else could before the outcry got so bad they reversed course.  but I digress...

Why the sudden interest in that course?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jingo Flemma,
Maybe the paper felt that the recent Bosnian immigrants, over 5,000 of them, might get a better understanding of what's going on around them if they had a page in their native language.

But no matter, do you think the same editors are still working there, 9 decades later? 

[John Blain]

Jim Kennedy,

Thanks for this great info on Yahnundasis. I was always curious as to what was original and what had been changed over the years. Is it safe to say that with the exception of the 118 yard third hole which NLE the routing today is virtually the same as when the course first opened?  Also, any idea where was the original tee on the par three seventh was as that hole now plays about 150 yards or so, well short of the original 212 yards? Is the green today the original seventh green? And the now par five sixth was a par four originally. Do you know if the hazard in front of the green is original or was that put in later as the hole became a par five?

Thanks in advance if you can answer any of the above!

-John

[Jim_Kennedy]

JP,
No, I don't have that kind of information, just the posted article and diary of Charley McCarthy's, which is interesting and colorful in its own right.

[Jay Flemma]

Jingo Flemma,
Maybe the paper felt that the recent Bosnian immigrants, over 5,000 of them, might get a better understanding of what's going on around them if they had a page in their native language.

But no matter, do you think the same editors are still working there, 9 decades later? 

uh...Jim...hello...they did this five years ago!!!!!!

[Jud_T]

My old hood!

[Jim_Kennedy]

When I posted the article I called it 'provocative', there was no mention of it being all the proof one needed to make a judgement about the genetics of Yahnundasis. Your original comment about the possibility of the decades old article containing homerisms was a sufficient reply, one I'd agree with. 

......but I don't know why you chose to lower yourself into the smelly morass of jingoism by bashing the modern version of the newspaper because they printed a page in the language of a group of immigrants.
 
I posted the article because I had been pursuing another line of inquiry when I happened across the information and thought it was worth posting.
What's more puzzling JingoJay, is why the heck you care what I'm posting?

[Jim_Kennedy]

This must be one of Charley McCarthy's homeys:

NESTER BROTHERS GENERAL CONTRACTORS
In 1908 John Nester, Kellogg Street was a self employed worker who did jobs which required hand tools, horses and manpower. One such job was driving his horse and wagon to the Clinton O & W Railroad station to pick up building stone that had been shipped from Medina. He was to deliver them to Marvin Street for the construction of St. Mary's Church in 1909. Other such jobs he performed were the construction of the greens for the Yahnundasis Golf course in New Hartford in 1920 and the Valley View Golf Course in
Utica in 1922-23. In 1926 his sons Daniel W. and John T. joined their father and they did the greens at Broadacres Sanitarium Golf course in 1926-27 along with other general contracting jobs in our community. In 1934 John died leaving Daniel W. and his brother John T. to carry on and they formed Nester Brothers, with John doing the bookkeepingand landscaping and Daniel the estimating
and manual labor.

The text comes from an advertiesment in that obviously left-wing rag, The Clinton Courier.  Seems like hand tools, horses and manpower were the order of the day in upstate NY, ca. 1920.

[Tyler Kearns]

Jim,

You should forward the link to Ian Andrew, who has (is?) working on a master plan for the club. As you probably know, he likes the research aspect of restoration, so he'll definitely appreciate the additional information if he does not already have it.

TK

[Ed Homsey]

I agree with whomever made the statement about the impact of Joe Bausch's discovery of the Fulton History site.  It is almost as addictive as GCA.  I have found a bundle of interesting information about my home club, and as the Travis Society Archivist, I have been excited about Joe's discovery of Travis's design of the Sargowana Golf club in Brooklyn, NY; Factors related to WWI prevented that course being built.  Then Jim discovered the Travis connection to the Stamford Country Club.  And, now Yahnundasis, one of my favorites--though drastically changed from the original drawings by Mr. Travis.

Major changes were made to the front nine at Yahnundasis due, in part, to highway construction.  From what I can determine, the greens for the current #1, #2, and #5 are not original greens.  The routing changes on the front are unclear to me, though I know that both the tee and green on #1 were moved well away from the clubhouse.  The tee, fairway, and green are very different on #2, and the original par 3 third no longer exists.  The current #3 follows, more or less, the original 4th hole, retaining the same green.  The current #4 appears to retain tee, routing, and green of original #5.  The purchase of additional land, permitted the construction of the current par 3 5th and a new tee and routing for the current par5 6th.  The green and chocolate drops at the 6th appear to be original to me, though I have no documentation for that.  Someone asked about the 7th.  That appears to be an original greensite, but the tee was just off the 6th green.  So, the hole ran north to south as opposed to today's northwest to southeast.  The current 8th and 9th holes appear to reflect Travis's original drawings very closely, though I wonder about the 8th green.  The 9th green is classic Travis.  The back nine appears to be unchanged in any significant way.

Travis had a very close relationship with Yahnundasis going back at least as far as 1909.  I believe he was introduced to Yahnundasis by President Taft, whose friend and, later, Vice-President was James S. Sherman, one of YGC"s founders.  There are records indicating that in addition to formal exhibitions, Travis played several rounds of golf at YGC with Taft, Sherman, and/or Sherman's sons, including Sherrill.  So, it seemed rather natural to call upon Travis to redesign their course using newly acquired land.  It also is likely that Sherrill Sherman played a key role, as a member, overseeing the construction of the golf course.  However, whatever role he might have played does not diminish, in my mind, the work that Travis did there.  The routing and greensites strike me as classic Travis.

I appreciate the attention this discussion has brought to Mr. Travis. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

Ed,
Don't forget Charley McCarthy. 

Sherrill Sherman's contribution to Yahunandis seems to be in a similar vein as that of Fred Waldo at Orchard Park, where "Mr. Waldo has personally supervised the buildlng work since the course was planned by Walter J Travis more than a year ago."

http://www.fultonhistory.com/Newpapers%20Disk2/Buffalo%20Ny%20Morning%20Express/Buffalo%20NY%20Morning%20Express%201917%20pdf/Newspapers%20Buffalo%20NY%20Morning%20Express%201917%20-%203538.PDF#xml=http://www.fultonhistory.com/dtSearch/dtisapi6.dll?cmd=getpdfhits&u=ffffffff9a050459&DocId=2550786&Index=Z%3a%2fFulton%20Historical&HitCount=5&hits=6f9+6fa+6fb+6fc+6fd+&SearchForm=C%3a%5cinetpub%5cwwwroot%5cFulton%5fNew%5fform%2ehtml&.pdf

[Ed Homsey]

Jim--Will not forget Charlie McCarthy.  In fact, just copied your posting of McCarthy's description of his work at YGC and put it in our YGC file.  And, now we switch to Orchard Park.  Another Fulton History link to open!!  Can't wait to read the Orchard Park item and, perhaps, pass it along to our OPCC friends.