David,
I'm perfectly comfortable with what I have written...are you comfortable with the fact that you cut your quote short of where it shows Tom to be disagreeing with his own essay? You may have included the Brown part but left out the part that addressed our larger conversation...the train story being a bogus myth.
My quote addressed
exactly what we were discussing. You are so rabid to get TomM that you are trying to make issues out of every little thing, whether a real or imagined. His view has changed over time. So what? He has long acknowledged this. Why the hell would I quote something relevant only to a non-issue?
Do you even know at this point what it is that TomM did to deserve your bottomless animus?
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Bryan,
This whole multi-month exercise has been your strange attempt to get TomM, and from my perspective you have fallen well short, as has Jim. After all this, it sure looks like he had a sound basis for his opinion of the train story, whether you guys agree with it or not. I personally don't always agree with the way TomM handles source material, but given the treatment he constantly receives from you and others, it is no surprise to me that he did not go out of his way to help you out with your research. After all, we aren't talking about supposedly-super-secret club records and he isn't demanding that you take his word for anything. Rather he is relying on published articles, books, etc. Didn't he identify them to you? If it were me I'd gladly hand over the articles themselves, but for you to to get bent out of shape because you left it to you to pull the articles yourself? Well that seems a bit much.
As for my analysis, its soundness has never been dependent upon your willingness to accept it. I generally take your opinion seriously and if my analysis eludes you that that gives me some pause, but frankly it gives me much less pause than it used to before this stuff all become so personal for you. Here is some more analysis which I suspect you will reject out of hand because I doubt it is what you want to hear, but hopefully you will prove me wrong . . .
I am not sure I am willing to entirely throw away the Uzzell account because it got the purchase story wrong. It well could be this was the Crump family's hunting land in the sense that it is where they hunted, whether they owned it or not. My friends and family have hunted the same land for decades without ever purchasing a profit or any other interests.
Also,
while I doubt that the Crumps ever purchased the land or a profit, I don't think your searches go back far enough to tell us for sure. We know Crump's extended family ran into financial trouble in the 1890's and we really don't know what they owned up to that point or what if anything the sold over the years, do we? Also, I am not sure that a profit owned by Crump would even show up in a deed documenting his purchase of the entire estate, as the profit would have become redundant. Also, such a profit could have existed when Crump was a child and either expired or extinguished at some point. Given that it was his father who supposedly purchased the interest, you'd have to go back for quite a bit further than you did to say for absolute certain that the Crumps never had a legal interest in the land.
Even if we knew the Crumps never had a legal property interest, this wouldn't necessarily settle the issue. As I said from the beginning there area also a number of arrangements and licenses whereby the Crumps could have acquired access to the land, short of purchasing and recording a profit. I know you hate these sorts of pesky details, but since you are making statements about how story is absolutely proven false you really ought to consider getting the rest of your ducks in a row, or at least modify your statement to fit with your degree of proof.
One thing I find interesting about the Uzzell account is that he had the identity of Crump's father correct, which is more than I can say. Doesn't this suggest that he had some sort of source who at least had some correct information? Even if the account of the purchase is incorrect, there may be something to be learned from the account. Besides, if you start throwing out accounts where everything does not line up, then the AWT story is a goner.
Speaking of which, perhaps you can reconcile what AWT actually wrote with this notion that everything can fit together. Specifically, I'd appreciate if you would address how Crump could be riveted by the land from a train if he had already been very familiar with the land from hunting, and how his first thought could be golf it it was his hunting grounds?
Or is it your position that the only stories that are correct are AWT and Brown?