[Ira Fishman]

Sven and others do a wonderful job of mining magazine and newspaper articles. I am the middle of reading a good and detailed history of the drafting and ratification of the US Constitution which reminded me that letters and diaries are invaluable resources as well. Which architects kept publicly available diaries and/or notes or have had their letters collected? I am aware that the Tufts Archives contain a wealth of materials created by Ross. But there must be others that the historians on here know about.


Thanks as always.


Ira

[Charlie Goerges]

RTJ donated his papers to Cornell I believe. There are probably letters in there.


I've also seen letters of Mark McCormack that were related to golf. Can't remember where though. They'd have salience to early Nicklaus work perhaps.

[Ian Andrew]

RTJ donated his papers to Cornell I believe. There are probably letters in there.

It's a spectacular resource.
It's searchable and quite easy to find what's in it.
But the documents are not directly accessible.

I have had documents scanned and sent to me for a fee - which is typical for Universities.
In my case, the particular documents I wanted had to be approved by the family.
There is everything from drawings sets, to photos, to reports to financial records.
It's pretty comprehensive.

[Kalen Braley]

I know its hard to find reliable information from 100 years ago, which is basically no different than today I guess if you look at the shit shows on most media platforms, social or otherwise. 

But in general, i wonder what sources from back then are considered most reliable.  News clippings, diaries, journals, letters, club historian essays...who to believe??  The vetting/due diligence process would seem to be difficult at best...

[Charlie Goerges]

i wonder what sources from back then are considered most reliable.

This is so worth talking about, hopefully we can have a chance to do it justice. It's not so much a matter of which sources are most reliable, but which sources are most reliable about what? I would trust a daily newspaper about a lot of things, but context isn't always given, so even factually correct information can be misleading. In golf, you can imagine a case where an architect submits a design blueprint to get a job, but the course doesn't get built for a few years, and in that time a different architect gets hired and designs the course. Now say the original design was mentioned in the paper, but no follow-up article was written later. The first article was factually correct, but without context. Now imagine a researcher a hundred years later finding that article... It just means that there needs to be corroborating evidence and preferably a lot of it.


Diaries or personal letters are similar. You can sort of trust what a letter writer says about their own feelings, but again, can you trust what a civil war soldier says about the battle strategy of the army? Probably not. (You might not even trust them about their personal feelings 'no my dearest wife, I've never contemplated going to a prostitute')

[Kalen Braley]

Charlie,

Those are all great points.

Not sure how long you've been on GCA.com, but there was an epic thread around the origins of Merion that went well over 100 pages, (I think it was the longest ever topic on this site).  But it certainly broached the issue several times over, perhaps Mike C or someone can find it via the search functionality and with any luck get it going again! 

[Charlie Goerges]

Kalen, I do remember the long Merion thread, even then I couldn't keep up with it.


That said, I wanted to reiterate Ian's mention of financial documents. Those must really be the gold standard of historical research. If there's one thing that can probably be trusted, is when money was either on the line or exchanged. Insurance documentation or bank records or club finance records are all probably more reliable than anything else. Obviously nothing's perfect, but if RTJ said in a letter we moved 2 million cubic feet of earth at project, but his contractor billed him for 1.3 million, I'd probably trust the latter. (I should say that there are certainly reasons why either source could be wrong in this case, just talking on balance. Hence why corroboration is so important.)

[Adam Lawrence]

Jim Hanson's Jones biography 'A Difficult Par' made huge use of the archive at Cornell and is consequently the first book about a golf architect researched to professional historian standards.


When James Duncan was hired to renovate the Red course at the Royal Golf Daressalaam in Morocco, built by Jones and Cabell Robinson in the early 1970s, he went to Cornell and found Jones's original greens drawings. The greens were never built to these drawings, because there was an attempted coup in Morocco during the construction, and he left town, never to return, so James rebuilt them using the drawings as his guide, and they're pretty epic.


Adam

[Charlie Goerges]

the first book about a golf architect researched to professional historian standards.

That's a fact worth reflecting on.

[Anthony Gholz]

Ira:


A topic near and dear to any historian.


I've been thinking about your question for a while and have the following from my personal experience.


I've yet to find a diary to help me.  Not that it wouldn't be possible, just hasn't happened.  I have found a couple scrapbooks from personal collections and from a public source.  Port Huron's greens' chair for the 1920s was a big enough personage (knew presidents and governors etc) to leave his papers to the Bentley Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  So there I found some golf related, but mostly personal info.  Your reference to the Tufts shouldn't fail to mention that it isn't just Ross to be found, but many courses where Ross was involved also involved other architects.  That has been debated on other threads, even today.  So go to the Tufts for the Ross, but if your person of interest ever worked on a course that Ross did or redid you should give that a try.  Audrey Moriarty is an angel in disguise and works with all types, professional and otherwise, including me. 


The USGA Library and equivalent personnel is a great source.  Some on-line, but some you have to go there and spend the time.  You can set up appointments in advance and they were very gracious to me.  It was fun to spend an hour trying to get their Pine Valley scorecards in yearly order to see the change in yardages with each new architect or Chairman. 


I've also had great luck with various Historical Society's.  But you have to know that Alison did a course in Seven Hills, Ohio and know where the Seven Hills Historical Society meets, and on what day, and be lucky enough to show up on one of those days.  That works if you start with the local library and librarians, they're gold.  The ladies there produced a photograph of the course with a couple classic young kids with old clubs.  Also a scorecard.  The Case Western Reserve Historical Society was also good for all the Cleveland Alison courses including Kirtland, Lost Nation and Seven Hills.  Also debates regarding Mayfield's origin can be continued there.  A former head of the Cleveland Ladies Association started to write a history of Cleveland golf.  What a great find.  Once again a little planning and call ahead helps.


So get to your location, find the local library or historical society, and ask questions.


It also helps to know Mike Hurdzan.  I can never give him enough credit.  He's his own historical society and library in one place.


At least you won't have to spend the 2000 hours in the St Clair County Library in the 1990s looking at broken microfilm through god-awful ancient microfilm readers.  Although for the Detroit News it's still the way if you can locate it. 


Technology does have its uses.
Anthony

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