Tom Morris of St Andrews, page 17
In St Andrews, Tommy’s marriage was a newsworthy topic and the local papers recorded it in the marriage announcement columns. In West Lothian there was no mention of it. Tommy may have enjoyed celebrity status on the links lands of Scotland, but in the grime of its industrial heartland he was a nobody.
21 American Connections
We may not know how Tommy Morris met Margaret Drinnen, but there is no question about how his sister Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, met James Hunter. Lizzie was born and raised in the Golf House in the High Street at Prestwick, directly across the road from James’s home in the Red Lion Inn. The two families were the closest of friends with James being her big brother Tommy’s best friend and constant companion. Lizzie and James would be as familiar with each other’s households as they were with their own and there could not have been a time in Lizzie’s conscious life when James Hunter was not a part of it. If Margaret Drinnen was an unlikely match for Tommy, James Hunter and Lizzie were a pair, so to speak, from the start.
When her family moved from Prestwick to St Andrews in November 1864, Lizzie remained in Prestwick for four years before moving to Leuchars, near St Andrews, to live with her maternal grandmother. She was, however, far from being remote from her family while at Prestwick, for her father and brother Tommy were back there several times a year. Prestwick was all that Lizzie had known and James and his family were the centre of her life.
We also know that she and James were often in St Andrews during their years of courting. The Morris family was proud to keep a record of James’s rounds on the St Andrews course where his average score was in the low eighties. James was a golfer, not quite in the top class, but nevertheless good. He was a leading light in the Prestwick St Nicholas Golf Club and a contestant for the Open Championship in 1870 when Tommy claimed the Belt as his own. James was well known in St Andrews and played home-and-home matches with Mr Petrie and Mr Stonehouse, St Andrews businessmen, at Prestwick and St Andrews. He was a successful entrepreneur and enough of a social figure to be present at the re-founding of the Glasgow Golf Club in 1870. Indeed, he and Walter Smith played the inaugural match against Tom and the Captain of the Club, the Lord Provost of Glasgow. The Fifeshire Journal reported the event, remarking that Tom had been invited ‘to give éclat to the proceedings at South Park on the 10th of March.’ That James was involved was at once an acknowledgement of his association with Tom and recognition of his business and social success.
James left Ayr Academy at the age of thirteen and entered the offices of his father’s cousin in Ayr. The Hunter business was timber and James made an early and precocious start in it. At the age of fifteen he made the first of his travels to the New World. As a purchasing agent for Stewart of London, a company of timber importers, he went to Canada where he learned the timber shipping business, living in various port cities. In 1869 James left Greenock for Darien in Georgia, USA where he would buy standing timber, arranging its lumbering and shipping back to Britain for sale and distribution. By 1870, and only twenty years old, he had started his own business which was to flourish. In 1880 he was employing his younger brother, Robert, as clerk in his office on the Darien waterfront where he had already established his own wharf and sawmill.
The ships that James Hunter contracted in Greenock, Liverpool and the Baltic ports had their own triangular trade. From Glasgow or Liverpool they would sail to Lisbon with manufactured goods. From Lisbon, their cargo augmented with wine, they would catch the trade winds for the Azores and America and for the return voyage back to Europe they would be laden with James Hunter’s timbers from the pine forests of Georgia. Perhaps as a result of this link, James became the Portuguese Vice-Consul in Darien and later in Mobile, Alabama.
Darien was a small rural township, the administrative seat of McIntosh County on the Darien River, a branch of the mighty Altamaha at its river delta. Today the town has a population of some ten thousand, and is not much changed in size or numbers from that where a twenty-year-old James Hunter landed in 1869.
Darien was first settled by Scottish Highlanders in 1736 and named after the ill-fated expedition and settlement of 1697 on the Isthmus of Darien in Panama which put paid to Scotland’s attempt at colonization. The English had already built Fort George on the site in 1721, their first fort on Georgia soil, as a barrier against the Spanish in Florida.
The Scots settlers in Darien drew up a constitution, the first article of which stated that no man should own slaves. It was a dreadful irony that, near the conclusion of the American Civil War, ‘Black Yankees in Blue Coats’ should descend upon the township from the sea and raze it to the ground. The Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Negroes had sailed from Battery Wharf in Boston, led by Colonel Shaw. At the mouth of the Darien River, Shaw met Colonel Montgomery, a man with a bushwhacking background from Kansas. He gave the order for the looting and burning of the settlement in June 1863.
When James arrived in 1869, Darien was well on its way to recovery. A huge quantity of yellow timber was exported from Darien in 1870, bound for American and overseas ports. The timber, from the great sugar pine forests of heartland Georgia, was floated down the Altamaha River in rafts to the steam-driven sawmills of Darien. It was into this booming timber business that James brought his energy and expertise, to make the fortune that would provide for the Hunter and Morris families for generations to come.
Tom and Nancy may not have attended the nuptials of Tommy and Margaret in Whitburn, but they were certainly present at the wedding of their daughter Lizzie to James Hunter in Holy Trinity Church, St Andrews, on 4 March 1875. James’s brother, William was his ‘best man’ and Mary Bruce attended Lizzie as her bridesmaid. Once again there was a celebratory supper for the workshop men in the Golf Inn and this time the marriage was reported in both the Fife and Ayrshire newspapers. Two days after their wedding, James and Lizzie left Scotland to set up home in Darien.
Their route to Darien was circuitous. James took his new wife to Canada where he maintained interests with the London-based company that had given him his first opportunities in the timber business. While at Quebec, he seems to have followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law in the promotion of golf. John Foote of Quebec’s Morning Chronicle wrote of James Hunter in the Field in October 1875: ‘In July last a smothering enthusiasm was rekindled by the appearance amongst us of an accomplished golfer, and we at once organised the Quebec Golf Club’. At the end of July, James and Lizzie moved south to Darien, Georgia. He was, however, back in Quebec in October for the first competition of the new club which he won by a large margin. He was never heard of in Quebec again.
James had built a fine house on Second Street in Darien that stands to this day and is still known locally as the Hunter House, a clapboard building only a few yards from the waterfront and the wharves where he plied his business. James and Lizzie engaged two African-American servants, a boy called July Tog and a middle-aged lady, Catherine Gignihat, both of whom would long remain in the household. The neighbours and business associates of James would have warmly welcomed Lizzie, and she was certainly well provided for with her fine house and servants. Darien, however, must have been a shock for her: it was a rough lumber township in the deep south of America and a world away from St Andrews.
In contrast to the mellow warmth of a Scottish summer, the July heat of Darien is oppressive. The Georgia tidewater summer heat is exacerbated by the high relative humidity and while there is enough shade below the tall pines, there is no respite from the relentless damp heat.
In the 1870s Darien was a busy, vigorous little township strung along the waterfront of wharfs and sawmills. Timber was its mainstay and indeed its only reason for existing. Trees cut and trimmed in the forests were brought down the Altamaha River in great log rafts. Some logs were trimmed and cut into planks in Darien’s mills but the vast majority left the little port as logs in specialist bow-loading ships that transported the massive tree trunks in their entirety. These ships arrived at Darien with ballast of stones that were off-loaded in set places and in such volume that they came to form small islands. James Hunter built his wharfs from such ballast from Scotland, together with great log pilings with planked walkways that remain a feature of Darien’s waterfront and all of the little townships of the Georgia tidewater.
Back in St Andrews, despite the absence of James and Lizzie, these were halcyon times for Tom and Nancy. Tom’s business, although cramped for space, was going well. He was being widely complimented on his improvements to the Links and for the construction of the Ladies’ Golfing Green. He was also in demand from all quarters to lay out new courses. His own play was good and his middle son, Jof, was increasingly taking Tommy’s place as his foursomes partner in matches as far afield as Aberdeen and Luffness.
Tommy was also doing well, although at St Andrews in 1873 the combination of poor weather and Tom Kidd and then the following year at Musselburgh, Mungo Park and poor greens, had deprived him of his Champion status: he was still the man to beat. His dashing exhibition matches with Davie Strath and Bob Ferguson were in great demand everywhere.
More routinely, there were the usual matches after the Spring Meeting of 1870. Captain Stewart and Tom played a match against Mr Rae and Tommy that drew a large crowd. The captain and Tom played well in the first round before faltering in the second to a 5 and 4 defeat. Jof also kept his end up partnering Mr Bennett against the Honourable Charles Carnegie and Bob Dow from Montrose to win 3 up and 2 to play. Tom and Tommy kept to their winning ways, beating Davie Strath and Jamie Anderson by a 7 and 5 margin in a two-round foursomes match for a £10 purse. To wind up the meeting, Tom and Jof beat Davie Strath and Bob Dow 2 up at the 17th hole.
The father and son partnership drew crowds all summer. Tommy Morris was enough of a celebrity on the Links for the newspapers simply to refer to him as ‘Tommy’ and to record the details of his rounds while ignoring those of others. The Morrises took on Jamie Anderson and Davie Strath for a £20 purse in June, in front of a large crowd, and won handsomely. They repeated the match again in July, also for £20, before an even larger crowd. It was exhibition golf and an attraction for the summer holidaymakers. These events served to popularise the game and they also added greatly to Tommy’s own stature and popularity. Tommy and Davie took their performance to the links at Aberdeen where Prince Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria and himself Patron of the Aberdeen Club, followed their £20 match. Even the Edinburgh newspapers remarked on the crowds that Tommy attracted to North Berwick for his two round-match with Bob Ferguson.
These were the Morris family’s happiest years. With his renovations on the Links supported and lauded in the Club and the Town, Tom Morris could also bask in the reflected glory of Tommy’s acclaim. His shop was the busy nerve centre of golf in the Town and of the game at large. John’s limited mobility was no impediment to his employment with the men in the shop as he could propel himself unaided through the garden from the house into the workplace. Nancy would have a stream of letters from Lizzie and James in America that she could read and re-read to Jof and John and her friends who stopped by for a cup of tea. There would be talk of the alligators in the creeks of the Georgia Tidewater, the comings and goings of the timber ships and of the Native American Indians and Lizzie’s coloured servants in the house in Darien. These were happy times that Tom Morris must have reflected upon throughout the rest of his life.
22 Recognition and National Acclaim
Tommy Morris undoubtedly transformed golf in the course of his lifetime. He was ably assisted by his father and enjoyed a supporting cast of young players, who were all enthusiastic about the money to be made and eager to make a name for themselves. Davie Strath and Jamie Anderson were immediately at hand in St Andrews and Bob Ferguson of Musselburgh was willing and ready for any match. In England, Bob Kirk at Blackheath and Johnny Allan at Westward Ho! were keen to be involved and Jack Morris of Hoylake was always on for a foursome with tempting money attached to it.
All were young and eager. They were men of their time, a time of opportunity and self-improvement. Queen Victoria may have been in a retiring frame of mind following the early death in 1861 of her husband and consort, Prince Albert, but the country at large was not. Society was in transition, as the newly founded middle-class swelled and the artisans formed working mens’ institutes and mechanics societies. Sport was becoming organised with the formation of football, rugby, cricket and athletic associations; rambling clubs were taking the urban working classes into the countryside and railway excursions were creating a craze for leisure time mobility.
There was, however, no sudden burst of golfing activity. The general public was almost certainly aware of the game played on the linkslands of Fife and the Lothians, but it was far from being a popular sport. From the press coverage both at local and national level, it is clear that golf’s popularity was growing steadily. There were particular events that attracted the sporting swells and these were brought to the general public’s attention in the national press. This propelled interest in the game into pubs, men’s clubs and society rooms throughout the country.
Tommy Morris’s outright win of the Champion’s Belt at Prestwick in 1870 was one such event. It was as nothing, however, compared to the coverage of events surrounding the Park/Morris match in the same year. The preparation and planning for this event was widely reported for weeks in advance along with the details of betting and current form. It could be said to be the first hyped sporting contest, because the coverage far exceeded anything that had gone before in the prize-fighting ring or on the football field. The fact that their match ended in controversy added fuel to the fire of public interest and served to set the stage for the popularity of all future golfing contests.
After this, golf matches came thick and fast. We do not know whether the principal exponents of the game, the professionals of St Andrews and Musselburgh, were quick to exploit the opportunity, or whether the public appetite for the matchplay contest was such that challenges were driven by demand. Professional matches that had hitherto been restricted to events following the Spring and Autumn meetings of the principal golfing societies at St Andrews, Prestwick, Musselburgh and North Berwick, were soon taking place further afield and throughout the year, particularly during the summer season. Matches previously contested for ‘prizes’ or sums put up by gentlemen as a betting vehicle, became attractions sponsored by enterprising businessmen.
The advent of the mechanical grass mower undoubtedly helped to make more summer play possible. In less than a decade, golf evolved into an all-year-round pursuit of men from a broad spectrum of society. The demand for these contests was at least in part driven by the summer resorters and those who served them, the hotel proprietors, the boarding-house keepers and businessmen of the Town Council chambers, who saw revenue in the crowds that flocked to witness these spectacles. In Fife, at Leven, Elie and Burntisland, professional prizes were established and in the Lothians, both Dunbar and North Berwick were quick to promote similar attractions to those at St Andrews. Commerce was turning golf into a spectator sport. Sea bathing may have been the prime mover for the resorters, but the theatre of matchplay golf was the main amusement.
Such entertainment needs a stage, a director, a cast of characters and a star. St Andrews had them all. The dramatic sweep of the Links with its long expanse of beach and sea was the setting. Tom Morris was the director and a whole host of caddies and players who were prepared to take club to ball at a moment’s notice were the cast. Tommy Morris, however, was the star. The summer visitors could witness his matches at first hand on the Links and read about what they had seen in the following day’s press. A middle-class man with his family and even a working-class day-tripper travelling by train from Glasgow or Edinburgh could rub shoulders with a celebrity.
The starring role that Tommy played is easily seen in the increasingly lengthy press reports of his matches. No matter who his opponent or partner was, the press reported it. When Davie Strath took on Willie Park and subsequently Bob Ferguson over Musselburgh and Luffness in 1870, the Scotman’s report took up little more than a paragraph. Tommy’s matches in the same week in May against the same opponents over the same venues warranted a column; his presence always ensured extensive press coverage. Even the most trivial of his matches, such as those played against the better ball of two amateurs, each receiving strokes, was reported with the stake given and a full account of the holes played.
In the summer of 1870 the routine of what were really exhibition matches was established when Tom and Tommy returned from Westward Ho! and Hoylake in June. In Scotland, the Scotsman and the Herald, and in England, the Field and The Times, had reported on their activities, and within weeks the St Andrews Citizen was giving notice of matches being arranged on the Links that summer. In July, for instance, the Medical Faculty of Edinburgh University put up a £25 purse for a match between the Morrises and Davie Strath partnering Jamie Anderson. A similar match was staged in August for the entertainment of a trainload of excursionists from Peebles who, it was reported, followed the match in pouring rain.
Within a year, these matches were summer season fixtures and over successive summers they drew increasingly large crowds. Tom and the flamboyant Tommy, together with Davie Strath and Jamie Anderson, played foursomes golf in partnerships that switched regularly. The most popular events were, however, those in which father and son were partnered and it was through the reporting of these events that Tom began to be referred to as ‘Old Tom’. It was a name that stuck, and it was soon sufficient for the press to simply refer to ‘Old Tom’ and ‘Young Tommy’ in their reports.
Tommy appears to have partnered whoever was at hand. He took James Hunter along as his foursomes partner in a four-round match against Bob Ferguson and David Park, Willie’s younger brother, at Musselburgh in March 1871.1 The Musselburgh men won by one hole, but in subsequent singles matches Tommy beat Bob by five holes, while James fell to David Park by sixteen holes.
