Talamore at Oak Terrace - Club History
James W. Hilty

I.  Earliest History

The golf-course community of Talamore at Oak Terrace lies in Horsham Township, Montgomery County in southeastern Pennsylvania, twenty-nine miles from Philadelphia City Hall. Situated in the Schuylkill and Lower Delaware River basin, Talamore lies just beyond what geographers call the American Coastal Plain, on the northeastern edge of the American Piedmont, below the glacial ridge where the Uplands meet the Triassic-Jurassic Lowlands. Resting upon bedrock more than 200-million years old, the land surface in the region abounds in stately deciduous trees, set apart by basaltic ridges and rolling, well-drained fertile surfaces, with scattered marshes and wetland habitats. All of which provides near-ideal land for a golf course and for a residential community close to nature.

Before there were golfers and before the first Europeans arrived in Pennsylvania, the Lenni Lenape (also known as the Delaware) Indians hunted, trapped, fished, and foraged for food on or near the land that is now Talamore at Oak Terrace. In 1610 Dutch explorers were the first Europeans to set foot in the area, but it was a group of Swedes who established the first permanent settlements in the 1630s, followed closely by the English who dominated the area by the 1670s. The area attracted a large number of Quakers eager to flee intolerant English Puritan rule. In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn (1644-1718) a large, vaguely defined parcel of about twenty-eight million acres in the New World (drawing on left). The land grant was intended to settle a debt the King owed to Penn's father. To honor his father, William Penn named the land Pennsylvania.

A utopian visionary, William Penn intended to make Pennsylvania a “Holy Experiment,” a peaceable feudal state, or a proprietorship where his co-religionists could experience Quaker ideals and where persons of different backgrounds could live a “Just and Peaceable Life" in harmony amid a planned environment. Penn's development plan envisioned a “green countrie towne” to maximize open space and allow inhabitants to commune with the region's natural beauty.

With funds from some 600 investors, Penn purchased the “moral right” to the land from the Lenape Indians, who then left the region, opening the way for permanent English settlements. Rather than forcibly remove the Indians, Penn met the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) chiefs at the village of Shackamaxon under a broad tree (the “Treaty “Elm”) where, according to legend, he employed friendly persuasion and Christian charity, mixed with entrepreneurial chicanery, to forge an agreement to exchange land for goods and money.

Penn divided his colony into townships and one of the first was Horsham, named after Horsham, England (pictured here).   Horsham Township first appears on the 1687 map of Thomas Holme (Surveyor General of the colony of Pennsylvania). One of the oldest townships in Pennsylvania, Horsham was formally incorporated in 1717, which is sixty-seven years before Montgomery County split away from Philadelphia County. Horsham Township currently encompasses 16.77 square miles (roughly 5.5 x 3 miles) and 10, 750 acres. Shaped like an irregular parallelogram, Horsham is bounded on the Northeast by Bucks County (County Line Road) on the Northwest by Montgomery Township (Upper State Road), on the South by Upper Dublin Township, and the Southeast by Moreland, and the West by Gwynedd (Welsh Road).

Many of the area's earliest settlers were Welsh Quakers. A first wave arrived in 1683 and settled in Lower Merion, Radnor and Haverford Townships, followed a few years later by settlement of a second “Welsh Tract” in an area they called Gwynedd (Welsh for "white" or "fair land"), which today encompasses both Upper and Lower Gwynedd. Some Welsh property owners held parcels that overlapped between Gwynedd and Horsham. Welsh Road the oldest thoroughfare in the area (circa 1712) divides Horsham and Gwynedd. Built to give Welsh settlers in Gwynedd and North Wales access to the Pennypack Mills in Moreland Township, the road was originally called Pemmapecka Road (the Indian name for Pennypack Creek) but was changed to Welsh Road in 1750.

William Penn divided Horsham in roughly four equal parts and between 1682 and 1686 sold each, in turn, to George Palmer, Joseph Fisher, Samuel Carpenter, and Mary Blunston. Talamore is wholly contained within land included within the original Joseph Fisher Tract. In 1684 Fisher purchased 5,000 acres for ten cents an acre and then immediately began selling off large portions for ever-increasing prices, reaching $2 to $2.50 an acre in 1708, and passing other portions to his son.

In 1716 three Welsh farmers purchased the land that became Talamore. Robert Humphrey acquired 210 acres along Welsh Road and approximately 200 acres extending along what later became McKean Road. Abel Thomas bought a 200-acre parcel running along what became McKean Road extending as far as Horsham Road.

A third purchaser, Rowland Hugh acquired two hundred acres from Joseph Fisher's estate in 1716. The year before, according to one source, Rowland Hugh erected a log house at the site of what is now 921 Tennis Ave (currently the residence of John van Steenwyk) situated behind St. Matthew's Church and to the right of Talamore Drive as you enter from Tennis Avenue. A stone house with two and one-half stories, eight-rooms and seven fireplaces currently stands on the site. Evidence inside the house indicates that part of the current house was built over a log house around 1795 and the remainder of the house was completed in 1810, making it one of the older structures in Horsham Township. By comparison, the Keith mansion, the only surviving residence of a Colonial Pennsylvania governor, was built in 1722. Today, the van Steenwyk residence (pictured on left) can be glimpsed through the trees from the intersection of Talamore Drive and Woodbrook Drive and seen from the golf course to the right of the cart path next to 14th green and leading to the 15th tee.

By the time Rowland Hugh started to build his house the game of golf had long before been established in Scotland and the British Isles. No one can be certain when or why golf started. Some attribute it to the Dutch. Others mention a similar game played in China. Scots claim the game (or some version of it) was played there as early as 1100. The first proper golf courses, the first established rules of the game, and the first golf clubs were developed in Scotland's linksland regions along and around the Scottish coast. First written mention of the game occurred in 1457 in St. Andrews, Scotland. Mary Queen of Scots played in the sixteenth century. King James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England and authored the King James Version of the Bible, was a golf enthusiast. King James enjoyed hitting the links but forbade his subjects from playing on Sundays. All of this occurred before the English settled Jamestown.

While the Scots industriously developed the game of golf bringing it to a high order of perfection in the 18th and 19th centuries, Talamore's land passed through several owners, who used it principally for farming and grazing.
 

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Chapters
I. Earliest History
II. Pine Run Farms - The McKean Estate
III. McKean Manor House - Pine Ridge
IV. Horace Trumbauer and Talamore at Oak Terrace
V. Scandal and the Declension of the McKeans
VI. Pine Run Country Club and Alexander Findlay -- Brushing Against Golf Immortality
VII. Bankers' and the Great Depression.
VIII. Oak Terrace - The Wingel Years
IX. The “Old Oak”.
X. “Slammin' Sammy” Snead Comes to Oak Terrace.
XI. Location, Location, Location
XII. Oak Terrace - The “Bud” Hansen Years.
XIII. Talamore at Oak Terrace - Realen and Bob Levy, Jr.
XIV. Talamore at Oak Terrace: The making of a golf course
XV. The switchover, 1993-1995:
XVI. THE END OF THE BEGINNING