All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories
Hundreds of brief biographies of permanent residents of Laurel Hill East in Philadelphia and Laurel Hill West in Bala Cywnyd, Pennsylvania. Often educational, always entertaining.
Episodes
ABC:LHS 092 Thomas Jefferson ...
... had enough connections in Philadelphia that more than a score are buried at Laurel Hill.
- General Hugh Mercer, MD, was a good friend to Washington, but his influence on all the Founding Fathers was inescapable. He died from the Battle of Princeton.
- Jonathan Williams was not a military man, yet Jefferson trusted him to establish a United States Military Academy that would n...
BBB:LHWS #061 Horses and foxhunting...
... can be traced from medieval hunting forests to the horse country of Philadelphia’s Main Line. Discover how hounds, riders, breeders, and civic-minded families shaped the Devon Horse Show and the region’s enduring equestrian culture. Along the way, meet the Laurel Hill figures whose stories connect centuries of sport, society, and stewardship—culminating in the...
ABC:LHS 091-5 Frank Reed Whiteside...
...was an artist and instructor at PAFA who was inexplicably assassinated when he answered his front door one evening. Despite many maddeningly tempting clues, his case remains unsolved nearly a century later.
ABC:LHS 091-4 Jacqueline Powell...
...was only 10 years old when her mother Emily Lippincott Powell shot her in sleep and then tried to take her own life. Emily spent the rest of her life in Friends Hospital.
ABC:LHS 091-3 George Boehm...
...was a workman on the Baldwin floor in 1870 when a quarrel with a co-worker led to his own death from a crushed skull and his assailant's trial and imprisonment. This segment walks you through the justice system of 1870s Philadelphia.
ABC:LHS #091-2 Roy Wilson White...
...was a gifted young UPenn law instructor who in 1900 was robbed and killed near the campus. Drawing on contemporary newspapers and archival research, the podcast traces how racial panic, sensational reporting, coercive interrogation, and institutional pressure shaped the cases against Henry Ivory, Charles Perry, and Amos Stirling. The result is both a portrait of a promising life cu...
ABC:LHS 091-1 Samuel Morris Waln...
...was a wealthy Philadelphian who spent his free time in the "wild west" each summer until he and his companion were murdered in their sleep by their cook and guide. A cross stands in his memory in Wyoming.
ABC:LHS #091 Murder was part of the background noise in some areas of Philadelphia.
- S. Morris Waln, born into one of Philadelphia’s founding families, was murdered by his guide and cook during an annual journey west. His stone at Laurel Hill is melting, while a monument in his honor still rises from the Wyoming plains.
- Roy Wilson White, a promising Penn Law scholar, was robbed and killed after an ...
Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences...
...was open to anyone who wished to meet dinosaurs, birds, shells, fossils and the people who studied them. Now its public doors are closed, and I have come to Laurel Hill East to break that news to more than 50 of the founders, presidents, curators, collectors and supporters buried here. As we walk from grave to grave, we will follow the Academy from a rented room in 1812 to an i...
BBB:LHWS 060 Edward G. Budd and Rupen Eksergian...
...were design and structural engineers who forced the Age of Steam into the Modern Era with their iconic Silver Zephyr Diesel Electric car in 1934. Eksergian took his skills further during the Cold War when he was one of the people behind Atomic Annie, a mobile artillery piece with a nuclear warhead. Both men rest at Laurel Hill West.
ABC:LHS 090-5 Thomas E. Murphy ...
... knew virtually nothing about baseball, but found himself owning hundreds of shares of the Phillies during their horrible years of the 1920s and 1930s. He is remembered more as a yachtsman and a co-founder of Jupiter Island, Florida.
ABC:LHS #090-6 Many early baseball players ...
... were given nicknames that would never be tolerated today. We can never know how these players felt about being saddled with monikers like Chief, Three-Finger, Chico, Dummy, and Richie, based on being "othered."
ABC:LHS #90-4 Joseph Howard Berry, Jr. ....
...excelled at baseball, football, track and field, and life. He is in two Halls of Fame. He is little remembered today, partially because of a vile nickname that he carried from his days at Wharton through the rest of his life. His interment location is well hidden.
ABC:LHS 090-3 Frank Bettger... (by guest host Rich Wilhelm)
...was a mediocre infielder for the Cardinals who blew out his shoulder and took to selling insurance, at which he was initially less than mediocre. He rebuilt his personality and his life to become one of the best motivational speakers of his day, often compared to Dale Carnegie.
ABC:LHS #090-2 Frank Fleer...
...did not invent the gum that today carries his name, but his name has become synonymous with the pink chewy glob coveted by children of all ages worldwide.
ABC:LHS #090-1 Francis Richter ...
...was a sportswriter who championed the new game through his newspaper work and the ubiquitous weekly Sporting Life, which was an essential read in the early 20th century. Richter is in the Baseball Hall of Fame ... sort of.
ABC:LHS #090 We start with three ballpark Franks...
...Francis Richter, whose writing helped to make the game respectable; he is in the Baseball Hall of Hame.
...Frank Fleer, the man who ALMOST invented the pink gum that's accompanied baseball cards for nearly a century.
...Frank Bettger, who went from failure to success after he blew out his throwing arm in Chicago (prepared and presented by fellow guide Rich Wilhelm)...
BBB 059, part 3 Jáni Szántó...
...was a masterful violinist and instructor who escaped the Nazis with the help of Pope Pius XII and settled in Philadelphia as instructor. One of his old instruments was the "Lord Borwick" Stradivarius, built in 1702.
BBB:LHWS 059-2 Wilhelm von Wymetal ...
... was an Austrian emigree with a dueling scar who took his expertise with opera to Hollywood, where he directed stars like Nelson Eddy & Jeannette McDonald, and to Pittsburgh, where he shepherded the Civic Light Opera through its early days of success.
BBB:LHWS 059-1 Oscar "Papa" Schwar ...
... was a German timpanist whom Leopold Stokowski praised as the best in the business. His rumblings and poundings on kettle drums kept the Philadelphia Orchestra on its toes for more than 40 years. You'll hear lots of drumming in this one.
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