All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

From All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #077, part 3

Joseph Wharton was a Quaker businessman and philanthropist whose work is still felt throughout the city and the world. He was the primary founder of Swarthmore College. His business acumen allowed the US Mint to make a healthy profit in the years he was involved. Fisher Park in northeast Philadelphia was his gift to the city. The Wharton State Forest in New Jersey is the...

From All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #077, part 2

Captain Henry Biddle was wounded in the Battle of Glendale and died a few weeks later after having befriended his treating physician. His wife donated money in his name to found Biddle College in North Carolina, which has since changed its name to Johnson C. Smith University. His son Spencer Fullerton Baird Biddle was a Navy man who became a cattle rancher and introduced t...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #077, Part 1

Charles Macalester established the town of Torresdale, founded Presbyterian Hospital, financially advised eight US presidents, and may have been the richest man in the world. A codicil in his will provided for the beginning of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of the top-ranked liberal arts schools in the country. The river mansion Glen Foerd stands as another of h...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #077 - College Namesakes

Several Laurel Hill residents have institutions of higher learning named in their honor. Charles Macalester made a contribution that helped to turn a small liberal arts school into one of the finest small colleges in the land. Joseph Wharton made fortunes several times over, but is best remembered for starting what has become one of the top business schools in the c...

Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #046

For about 30 years in the middle of the 20th century, medical wisdom had declared that destroying organically healthy brain tissue was a legitimate treatment for varying psychiatric disorders. The concept of psychosurgery dates back to the Neolithic period but became more prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

The champion for destroying healthy brain tissue was a Phil...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 5

Philadelphian Henry Naglee was a West Point graduate who fought in Mexico, the West, and the Civil War. He took a liking to the West Coast and built the first permanent commercial structure in San Francisco, installed vineyards that produced the finest brandy in the country, and is namesake for the Naglee Park section of San Jose. But he was a scoundrel with women, one of whom ...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 4

Rat Catcher Lou Bossle was proud of his profession - it is even carved onto his Laurel Hill West tombstone. Twice in the 1890s, Philadelphia newspapers sent a reporter to keep him company in rat-infested basements while he was on the job.

I'll tell you about the long relationship between humans and rats, and share some of the methods used by ratcatchers of yore. 

If you're a li...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #76, part 3

Mabel Tinley was a Philadelphia-born con woman with a hypnotizing gaze who worked her way into New York Society with boldness and beauty. Fellow cemetery historian Tom Keels tells her remarkable story and suggests an inscription for her stone - should she ever get one.

Here Lies

MABEL TINLEY

AKA

Mrs. Richard W. Roelofs, Fickle Wife and Inattentive Mother,

Lasca Vega, Vaudevill...

From All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076

This segment of the podcast talks about the evolution of the diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from nostalgia and soldier's heart to shell shock and battle fatigue and the thousand yard stare. 

W. Griffin Gribbel was a wealthy Chestnut Hill businessman and Great War veteran whose wealth, career, and family could not save him from his post-war nightmares. His behavior oft...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 1

Morton McMichael Hoyt was named for his great-grandfather the mayor. His sister, Elinor Wylie, was a famed poet and author. Before he had turned 21, he married Jeanine Bankhead, older sister of up-and-coming actress Tallulah. When the marriage failed, they tried again. And then a third time. Then there's the time he jumped off a steamship on a bet ... or was it a dare ... to im...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076

The July 2025 episode tells of five people who really didn’t fit anywhere else.

• Morton McMichael Hoyt married the same woman three times and once jumped off a steamship to impress a 17-year-old girl.
• Major Wakeman Griffin Gribbel was gassed and wounded during the Great War; during one of several psychotic breaks, he mortally wounded a police officer, but a jury found him “not gu...

Biographical Bytes from Bala #045 for mid-June 2025

The card games whist and bridge arrived in Victorian Philadelphia and captivated its upper-class population. Bridge clubs formed all over town, but people soon realized the man in the know was Milton C. Work, a Philadelphia lawyer. A scoring system that Work popularized for contract bridge remains the one that most players use today.

Learn about the history of playing cards, the d...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #075, part 4

Baron von Munchausen was a German military man who traveled the country spreading his tales of wonder, which always featured himself in the role of a hero. Clarence Wiener came from a wealthy Philadelphia family.  He started to burnish his reputation during his brief stay at Harvard. Eventually, truth and fiction blended together. His widowed mother married an American-born vio...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #075

In the late 19th and early 20th century, more than 450 American heiresses traded their fortunes for a European title; they were called "dollar princesses."

Elizabeth Shindler Stetson was the hatmaker's third wife who married into a Portuguese title.

Roberto Carles Eskens claimed Belgian nobility as Marquis d'Eskens de Frenoys; or was he a German valet with a good story and a vivid im...

Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #044 for mid-May, 2025

John W. “Jack” Merriam made his fortune in real estate development – Oxford Valley Mall, Cedarbrook Apartment Complex, and many others. Among his acquisitions was the Curtis Publishing Building on Washington Square, with its magnificent Maxfield Parrish / Louis Comfort Tiffany glass mosaic in the lobby. Another was Maybrook Castle next to the Wynnewood ...