Pat,
Sorry, but I disagree with some of your conclusions based completely on personal experience with club's and their histories.
To JM you stated:
“Why would you research and craft a club history if you didn't want it made public, it makes NO sense.” First of all the fact is that many club’s do exactly that. There are a number of club’s that desire complete anonymity to the public. Part of the reasoning is based upon personal privacy while another is based upon the PRINCIPAL of public privacy, that being that if they can and do put into the public domain some private information they may be forced in the future, for whatever reasons, to have to divulge other, sensitive private information they want kept private no matter what. That EXACT reason has been stated to me at three different clubs and is part of signed agreements I have with them that allowed them to hire me to research at them and on their behalf.
“Ask yourself, why would a club that's gone to the trouble to research and publish its history, want to keep it a closely guarded secret ?” Once again, there is that privacy issue. Since a number of clubs actually do it, a question such as the one you ask is moot. That some, such as yourself, can’t understand or think their reasons for doing so are valid have no bearing on it.
From your original post:
“TEPaul refutes the work or points out errors based on his access to that particular club's archives… When TEPaul is asked to cite/quote the source documents, he declines, indicating instead that the club doesn't want that information made public….”
First off, there are several points where Tom’s statements have been refuted. For example, Tom stated “Above Moriarty mentioned I claimed (or Shinnecock claimed via Goddard) that Dunn did not come to America until 1894. I said nothing of the kind. What I said was that Shinnecock's presentation of their Dunn architectural history is that he came to work on that golf course in 1894 and 1895 and not in 1893…” Yet beginning in my reply #60 I posted a copy of an 1895 newspaper account where it clearly puts Dunn at Shinnecock from the beginning of 1893. This was just one example of contemporaneous proofs shown by myself and others on this point.
Now maybe Shinnecock has proof that he wasn’t hired and brought aboard until 1894, but there are simply too many examples cited that prevent one from simply accepting what Tom says is Shinnecock’s official history on faith. One might do so on TRUST, but not on faith. Yet no one can blame someone for disagreeing with it based upon the cold-hard accounts presented from contemporaneous articles.
“On the other hand, what I don't understand is the following: Why would a club want to conceal its historical record? What purpose would that serve?” As I said above, as there are a number of clubs who take this stance your question is moot. That you don’t understand the “WHY” behind it is of no concern to them as explaining it would expose those same records they want kept private.
“I can't figure out why a club would treat their history as a confidential record, it doesn't make any sense. So, a secondary and/or reasonable conclusion would seem to be as follows. You/we HAVE to ACCEPT David Moriarty's treatise until documented evidence is brought forward that refutes it.”
No, Pat, one does not, and here is why. David (and myself as well) is working from SECONDARY sources and not PRIMARY sources. If you stated that one should give credence that David has made a strong case to disprove the “accepted history” of Shinnecock, I would agree. But he hasn’t made any real case to disprove it at all since he can only do so by referencing the PRIMARY source material.
This is not a case of disproving what an outside person to the club (Tom) has stated as what the clubs own private documents state to be true, rather it is a challenge to what the club states it is based upon a semi-official or official club history that has been referenced.
On that point Tom is correct. David, or anyone else for that matter, needs access to the primary source material in order to research the question before their conclusions “must be accepted.”
That is why your statement that “You can't refute his research without producing source documentation that contradicts or corrects it…” has no validity for it is David’s job (or anyone else for that matter) to FIRST prove his conclusions to actually disprove what Shinnecock claims before anyone else needs to produce documentation to dis[prove David. You even agree with this, if only without realizing it when you stated, “If a club desires to keep their version of their history a secret, so be it, there's nothing you can do about that, except additional research to try to make your position as rock solid as possible.”
You concluded with an interesting comment. “Again, I can't understand why a club would treat their history as "top secret" it doesn't make any sense, especially at a club of note, a club that's part of the fabric of golf in America.”
That seems so reasonable, but then ever since the first club that told me why I could not reveal private information of theirs that dealt only with the architectural history of the golf course, I have come to appreciate that, even though some such as yourself may not “understand” the “why” that it is far more than simply a quirky approach they may have to privacy and that in each case their reasons turn out to be sound and understandably justifiable. And in each case I could only come to that conclusion AFTER the information was shared with me.