Missing Letters of Merion: Horatio Gates Lloyd and Charles Blair Macdonald

[DMoriarty]

About a week ago TEPaul provided us with a glimmer of hope that at least the first chapter of the long running and contentious Merion debates might finally be coming to an end.    Specifically, in post 509 on the ". . . a Sore Subject" thread, he wrote that he had just received “a disk from Drexel U that contains a ton of stuff on Lloyd. All kinds of correspondence including letters between Lloyd and Macdonald which helps explain why CBM wrote Lloyd at Drexel Co instead of the MCC Search Committee. . .”   He elaborated on this in that same post and in post 512, and I was hoping to focus the discussion onto these posts here.
 
Those who have followed the debate or read my IMO have some realization of the important role Horatio Gates Lloyd played in the creation of Merion East, and thus understand that such documents might go a long ways toward clarifying what happened during the planning stage of the golf course.  Indeed, according to TEPaul in post 509:
“It looks like . . . they [M&W and Lloyd] were working on something out there with the course in the latter half of 1910. Macdonald and Whigam may've been the actual designers and Wilson and committee may've been brought in later once the land was under Lloyd's control more for developing the agronomics of the course. . . .”
Obviously it would be premature to draw any strong conclusions without even seeing these documents, but from the sounds of it TEPaul has received some pretty compelling and interesting information, so I again commend TEPaul for bringing the documents to our attention.   Hopefully, TEPaul’s example will lead to more productive and less contentious discussions from hereon.

Before turning to TEPaul for some clarification, I should probably mention that that quite a few observers have contacted me privately to warn me that they suspect that TEPaul’s posts are part of some cynical game to make me look foolish.  In short, they suspect TEPaul just made it all all up to make me look bad.  But that would make little sense for many reasons, not the least of which is that such deception and duplicity would reflect poorly on him, not on me.   So call me crazy, but I am inclined to believe him, and would like to turn to the actual documents so that we each may begin to analyze for ourselves what we can learn from these documents. 
__________________________

TEPaul, 

Again, thank you for bringing forward this information.  I very much appreciate it, and am sure others do as well.  I hope you don't mind answering a few questions and getting us started in a productive direction . . .

1. Now that you have had about a week to consider the documents, is there anything more you can tell us about them? 

2. Will you be making the documents available for others to review, and if so, how and when?   Or would you rather we contact Drexel directly to obtain the digital copies for ourselves?

2. I’ve reached out to a few of the more obvious repositories at Drexel University, but have thus far had no luck locating any collection at Drexel containing substantial material from or about HG Lloyd.  In fact, I have been told by a few archivists there that no such documents exist at Drexel.   But oftentimes at Universities one hand is unaware of what the other is up to, and given your statement that you got these documents from Drexel, I assume they must have been mistaken.    Can you tell us a bit more about from where within Drexel University these documents came?

Thanks.

David.
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P.S.  Here is a link to the page containing the posts in question, for those interested in seeing TEPaul's posts in context. 

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,46025.490/

[JESII]

David,

Why on God's Green Earth would Horatio Gates Lloyd's paperwork find itself at Drexel University?

Please don't say because he worked there...

[Mike Cirba]

David,

I haven't seen or talked to Tom since the Mucci-fest at Mountain Ridge, and then only briefly, but I'd be very surprised if his post wasn't in jest.   

I say that because the last part of his post goes into some over-the-top musings about asking Drexel to destroy the evidence.   

I'm not sure I'd agree with those who think he was trying to make anyone look foolish...I think that was his way of throwing his hands in the air in frustration at all of the endless speculation that continues despite the fact that none of it is supported by the physical evidence any of us have uncovered to date.

At least that was my take on the matter.   

I too would like to see it as the start of a new tone and attitude between some of us with an interest in that topic...perhaps we can all just agree to disagree for the time being and agree as well to all dig for more evidence if we think there are matters still to be determined.

[DMoriarty]

Jim Sullivan,  

I believe that TEPaul tried to answer your question on the other thread.   And whether you agree or not, TEPaul obviously thought Drexel was a good place to look for these documents because TEPaul has been talking about going over to Drexel University to look for these particular documents for for weeks or perhaps months!    

Were this nothing but a cynical charade, that would be a pretty elaborate lead in, don't you think?  

As for me, I doesn't matter why HGL's documents would have ended up at Drexel.  All that matters is that, according to TEPaul, the docs ended up at Drexel.   Not only that, but according to TEPaul, he obtained a copy of these records on a CD.
_________________________________________________

Mike Cirba,

Obviously, TEPaul is quite capable of addressing this himself, so perhaps you should leave it to him.  

Because as you mentioned, you don't know. 

[JESII]

David,

I asked Tom on that other thread. I'm asking you on this one.

Open your eyes.

[Steve Lang]

  Very polite request. Potential subterfuge.. irony.  How fitting, the intrigue continues..  will this be made into a movie?

Frankly, have Bryn Mawr or PRR archives been investigated in this great west philly research project?  A collector along Lancaster Road or a buff out at F&M College interested in historical power players?  

http://www.mainlinerealestate.com/BrynMawrHistory    

The community of Bryn Mawr, nine miles west of Philadelphia, serves residents of at least two counties and three townships. More than half its three square miles lie in Lower Merion, the rest in Delaware County’s Radnor and Haverford townships...

--About 1869 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company established a new community, supplanting a hamlet called Humphreysville, on land that once belonged to the Thomas and Humphreys families. An earlier generation of railroad men had designed a sinuous track to avoid the hills, but new equipment and more powerful locomotives enabled engineers to straighten the route. To overcome local opposition to the proposed location of the new tracks, the directors bought full properties rather than mere rights of way. Between April 1, 1868, and March 18, 1869, William H. Wilson, the railroad company’s agent, acquired 283 acres of land with more to be added later. Not only was the railroad built, but under Wilson’s guidance the company improved existing streets, opened new roads, planted trees, subdivided properties, and offered land for sale. Although deed restrictions controlled the density, use, placement, and value of potential buildings, these plots found buyers.

In his book Reminiscences of a Railroad Engineer, written in 1896, Wilson claimed credit for choosing the new name, Bryn Mawr, for the former Humphreysville. He had discovered the name in the property records of Rowland Ellis, one of the original Welsh settlers, who called his early-eighteenth century house Bryn Mawr, meaning “high hill.”

Who is this WH Wilson?

[DMoriarty]

Jim,

Drexel University wasn't one of the repositories I had checked, but then these types of records don't always end up where one might first think they would.

Besides, there is no need to speculate.  Either TEPaul received a disk from Drexel containing a ton of information on Lloyd and a bunch of correspondence between Lloyd and CBM, or TEPaul made it up.  
__________________________________________________________


For those who missed it, here is a transcript last week's written conversation between Jim Sullivan and TEPaul, with one comment by me, David Moriarty. (Posts 508-512.)   It took place beginning last Tuesday, I think, and spanned over 18 hours, with over 15 hours passing between TEPaul's first post and his second post largely confirming the first.

JSullivan:
Tom, What I'm curious about is why Lloyd would have taken chairmanship at all if it were only going to be for 2 months. What could have happened in that time?

TEPaul:
Sully,  Don't know as the MCC minutes don't say why.

However, today I received a disk from Drexel U that contains a ton of stuff on Lloyd. All kinds of correspondence including letters between Lloyd and Macdonald which helps explain why CBM wrote Lloyd at Drexel Co instead of the MCC Search Committee. As I suspected it seems he may've been acting pretty independent of MCC even though it was said in the MCC minutes he was representing MCC with HDC, at least until the initial offer was made in Nov. 1910. I have for some time suspected that his negotiations with HDC before the offer was made may've been part of his estate papers which were never reposited with MCC.

It looks like Moriarty and you may've been right all along and that they were working on something out there with the course in the latter half of 1910. Macdonald and Whigam may've been the actual designers and Wilson and committee may've been brought in later once the land was under Lloyd's control more for developing the agronomics of the course. Maybe this is why so much has been found from Wilson about agronomics and basically not a word from him has been found about actual architecture, at least not in the early days. But frankly I can't even remember when Hugh Wilson ever really spoke much about architecture.

This could be amazing. This very well may be one of the most significant mis-attributions in the history of American architecture. It seems everyone must have been either mistaken somehow or in on some really big attribution conspiracy.

I've got to go to Florida tomorrow for 5-6 days and I'm not taking a computer with me but I will go through all this stuff next week and give a full report.

I guess I should report it to Merion first though. I have no idea what they may want to do. Maybe we might think about just destroying all this stuff and acting like it never happened. Of course I might need to put some pressure on Drexel University to see if they'll consider expunging all this stuff. But, you know, I guess I may have some pull down there seeing as A.J. Drexel was my great, great grandfather, but on the other hand perhaps not as I doubt even they would want to deal with a lying, drunken creep.

Pretty amazing but when someone is proven flat-ass wrong he should just man-up and admit it. One just never knows what may happen next in these things we do. Stranger things have happened, I guess, but not much stranger.

DMoriarty:
TEPaul,  I appreciate you bringing this to our attention, and in a timely manner.   Thank you for that.  DM

JSullivan:  
Why would Drexel University have any of HG Lloyd's estate papers?

TEPaul:
I assume because it's in Philadelphia and Lloyd was a partner of Drexel Co in Philadelphia (I guess even though they did have an office in NYC, and a correspondent office in London and Paris) in the first decade and until 1912 when he became a partner of Morgan & Co. But they were essentially sister companies because initially A.J Drexel made J.P. Morgan and I'm told by A.J. Drexel's biographer that the partners in both companies in the early 20th century were very close and sometimes transferable (as they had been in the 19th century).

You never know where you may find some things like that. A couple of months ago I found 200 years of the Biddle family papers at the Univeristy of Delaware. They included correspondence with some of the people of MCC at the time we're interested in. And there are a ton of Leeds family papers in a university in Boston.

There's stuff in the woodwork all over the place and the trick is in the searching. I am no longer a GCA DEFENDER or just a GCA INTERPRETER; I have become a full-blown, card-carrying GCA SEARCHER!!!  

And I'm hot on the trial of that Merion East topo survey map the Wilson Committee referred to in early 1911 and at this point I have not much doubt that Macdonald's and Whigam's names are on it and that they did it and probably beginning in 1910 and culminating in the first half of 1911.

At this point, I think all the Wilson Committee was appointed to do and asked to do in the beginning was to just grow some grass! And that's why we have all those agronomy letters and nothing on architecture or even construction---eg they hired Pickering in June 1911 to do the construction. But then a few years later in 1912 they asked Hugh to go abroad because apparently they forgot to do bunkers in 1911.

I mean seriously, what do you expect from some inexperienced insurance salesman? But I do know he always loved grass and plants and so did his brother Alan, and they both knew quite a lot about both before Merion Ardmore began, so that seems to be why the Wilson Committee was formed. Technically it probably should've been called the "Committee on Grass Growing."

And now I'm off to Florida for 5-6 days, Jimbo, and when I get back next week I'll review all this stuff and report it and try to unravel what looks, at this point, like a massively embarrassing mess for Merion and the rest of its friends and defenders here in Philadelphia.[/i]
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TEPaul ended by telling Jim Sullivan that he'd report further on the find when he returned from Florida, and then did not post (that I saw) for about four days.  

Presumably he is now back from Florida, and I hope he now has time to fill us in on these documents.  Tom?

[DMoriarty]

TEPaul,

I am still waiting for some clarification here . . . Thanks.   

[Jeff_Brauer]

Speaking of waiting, when does Haley's comet come back?

[TEPaul]

My Goodness, another thread on Merion! Who would have expected such a thing!?

Nevertheless, here it is and potentially as of now, by that remarkable GOLFCLUBATLAS.com researcher and historian, David Moriarty, who produced in 2008 the much talked about and much debated IMO essay on here, "The Missing Faces of Merion." For those participants and observers of this website who were too lazy to read every word of the essay and/or too turned off by the poor manners and boorish behavior amongst some of the debaters to read every word of the debates on the essay that included about 25 different threads and about 3,000 pages of about 50,000 posts, allow me to summarize the essay; or better still allow me to encourage all to read this remarkably revelatory essay; it can be found in the "In My Opinion" section of this website listed under David Moriarty’s name.

Essentially the essay, again entitled "The Missing Faces of Merion," posited and ultimately concluded that Hugh Wilson and his five man amateur member committee did not design Merion East as Merion GC and their history and history books have always contended and presented, they merely built or constructed the golf course to someone else's design plan. The essay contends the men who actually created the design and the design plan (routing and hole designs) to be built were C.B. Macdonald and H J Whigam, two well known and highly respected amateur golfers and architects themselves or perhaps even HH Barker, the golf professional from GCGC who also practiced golf architecture at the time, and according to Barker researcher and essay collaborator, Tom MacWood, was likely considered the second best architect in America in 1910 (just behind Macdonald). The reasons the essay gives to base its conclusion that Wilson and Committee could not have routed and designed Merion East are that Wilson did not go abroad before the routing and designing of Merion East began as one of Merion's history books mentioned and that therefore he and his committee were too much the novices to have known or understood how to do such a thing.


David:

I highly commend you for your friendly tone and appreciative words regarding the content and meaning of this potential new discovery of material on Lloyd and Macdonald and God only knows what else. I do hope that tone and atmosphere can and will continue on in the future on this subject and others as it seems our administrator is concerned about bad manners and boorish behavior over particularly this subject between posters. Let us hope this can create a new beginning and a new, beneficial and collaborative atmosphere between us all.

As Ben Crenshaw often says, “I will seriously consider" dealing with your questions above (to wit; in your first post question 1, 2 and 2). But I hope you will understand and appreciate that this material certainly does potentially bring up a most remarkable development with Merion that their world class golf course (Merion East) may have been designed by Macdonald and Whigam (and perhaps Barker) and that they will need to be given the time to consider that realization and how to deal with it and present it, not the least concern being that they may have completely misinterpreted the facts and details of their own architectural history, at least initially, and how to explain that. (I do offer as an example and analogy the way the realization of who designed North Shore GC played out and played out on here).

And of course, even though I did consider not mentioning it, this may require us here in Philadelphia to admit to you and Tom MacWood after years of contentious debate that you have been right all along about Merion East and we and the club have been wrong.

Nevertheless, it is my philosophy and belief that TRUTH should always and will always win out over speculation and rumor.

Thank You

[TEPaul]

"Speaking of waiting, when does Haley's comet come back?  "


Mr. Brauer, Sir:


How the hell would I know that?? I'm an expert golf course architecture researcher/analyst historian and writer and not some expert on astronomy or astrology!! Your post is OT, out of line and excessively cynical even if in an oddly mirthful kind of way.

How in the world did a dirtball joker like you ever get to be an august president of the ASGCA anyway, and more importantly someone who can speak with even a modicum of authority on the history of golf course architecture??

[JESII]

So is the 6th hole a Road Hole imitation or what?

[TEPaul]

Jim:

Technically it was the 3rd hole at the time but yes, in my opinion, it was definitely a Road hole design; there is no question about it. I think any time any hole has a tee shot that ideally goes over a diagonal (particularly OB) that mimics TOC's Road Hole original railroad sheds and later hotel it should be considered a Road Hole and Macdonald should be given design credit for it since it appears he was the one who initially thought of mimicing it in golf architecture elsewhere.

[JESII]

Jim:

Technically it was the 3rd hole at the time but yes, in my opinion, it was definitely a Road hole design; there is no question about it. I think any time any hole has a tee shot that ideally goes over a diagonal (particularly OB) that mimics TOC's Road Hole original railroad sheds and later hotel it should be considered a Road Hole and Macdonald should be given design credit for it since it appears he was the one who initially thought of mimicing it in golf architecture elsewhere.

And the other shoe drops...

[Jeff_Brauer]

Messers Paul and Moriarity,

Smashing good show of civil discourse, gents!  A shining example of all, as the Marines are wont to say, we can be and a true inspiration to us all! Bravo and Jolly Good to both.

Mr. Moriarity, good sir,

I actually took a few precious minutes to Google for the Lloyd papers Mr. Paul speaks of but in my regrettably brief search, did not see any mention of such papers.  I suspect if they are in the Drexel collection, they will have been cataloged and are listed on their library or archives web site as public record, and most likely accessible to anyone with an intererst, although possibly under certain restrictions.

May I kindly suggest you follow up my terminated researching with some of your own, so as to satisfy yourself that Mr. TePaul is not playing some obtuse practical joke on yourself?  While a fine gentleman, history shows he occaisionally veers off the straight and narrow path from time to time.

I hope each of you has a fine day and that our paths cross again soon, perhaps in a jolly pub or on the wee links.

Jeffrey D. Brauer, esq.

[Terry Lavin]

One of you guys should seriously think about starting a Merion only blog.

[PCCraig]

One of you guys should seriously think about starting a Merion only blog.

Or cult!

[JESII]

Or Asylum...

[Mike Cirba]

If Tom Paul is "Crazy Uncle Tom", which he seems to have embraced, how should we then refer to Tom MacWood?

Any suggestions?

I realize that this has nothing to do with Merion, architecture, or this thread, but I thought as part of this new conciliatory and genial tone we might all adopt terms of endearment for each other. 

For instance, I see Jeff Brauer these days as playing the conflicted Catholic priest, one part of him wanting to live a clean and noble life (and presumably a chaste one), and the other, darker side, unable to resist participating in Merion threads.

So, I see him as kindly "Father Jeff".

and so on...

[Chip Gaskins]

Holy smokes....am I reading what TEPaul wrote correctly?  Is this some sort of late April Fools prank?

[Mike Cirba]

Continuing in a religious vein, we have young Jim Sullivan, who lives in Philadelphia, has seen The Word in person, and yet remains skeptical of all accounts...

I dub thee, "Doubting Jim".

[JESII]

Not skeptical of the accounts, just the interpretation of them as proof...I guess the name sticks...



Chip,

Yes.

[Chip Gaskins]

Jim

Yes, I read it correctly OR yes, it is a late April Fools prank?

[JESII]

Both...you read it correctly and it's a prank...sadly.

[TEPaul]

"And the other shoe drops..."


Jimbo:

Please feel free to visit my house and my famous shoe closet any time that's convenient for you. There are well over a hundred shoes in it including about 40-50 golf shoes through the fashion eras. My shoe closet has become famous regionally at least (when Marucci first saw it he wanted one for his house), and so potentially I do have many, many, many, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany shoes to drop either now or in the future.