Episodes
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
BBB #013: Every Brilliant Thing: Ice Cream and Laurel Hill
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
Thursday Oct 06, 2022
This 13th episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala is for mid-October 2022 - and a little early on purpose. Who doesn’t love ice cream? Philadelphia has made huge contributions to the history of this delectable warm weather treat. If you’re from the area, you grew up with Bassetts and Breyers; maybe you got some nonpareils or sprinkles on your soft serve; or you looked forward to going into a center city drug store so you could sit at the counter and have an ice cream float. All of these have a Quaker City connection – I will talk about them and more today on Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories – Every Brilliant Thing: Ice Cream and Laurel Hill
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Thursday Sep 22, 2022
ABC #043: Tick Tock: Clocks, Watches, and Laurel Hill, Part 1
Thursday Sep 22, 2022
Thursday Sep 22, 2022
Philadelphia has had skilled clock and watchmakers since colonial times.
Henry Voigt helped David Rittenhouse build his legendary orrery and supplied surveying instruments to the Lewis & Clark Expedition.
His son Thomas built a special clock for Thomas Jefferson that he used for his astronomical experiments. You can see his clocks both at Monticello and in the US Senate.
Isaiah Lukens not only built clocks that can still be seen at The Athenaeum and the Germantown City Hall, but he also built an air gun that may have been used by Lewis & Clark during their expedition.
Henry Seybert used the money left him by his father Adam to have a clock and a bell built for Independence Hall for the 1876 Centennial Celebration. Almost 150 years later, they still stand. And then there's the spiritualism...
I did not have time to talk about David Rittenhouse, Bailey, Banks & Biddle, Hugh Craig's pocket watch, the bell tower at Laurel Hill West, and the clock tower at City Hall. They will have to wait for Part 2.
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
BBB #012: Turbaned Warrior for Justice - C. DeLores Tucker
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
Cynthia DeLores Tucker was a Philadelphia born and raised champion of Civil Rights in the 1960s and 1970s and worked closely with such icons as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, and Cecil B. Moore. She chose to spend the last years of her life fighting what she saw as the pornography of gangsta rap. She was vilified by the music community, which spared no words in trying to show how sad and out-of-date her thinking was. She now lies in an unmarked grave at Laurel Hill West in Bala Cynwyd.
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Thursday Aug 25, 2022
ABC #042: Mint Condition: Some Laurel Hill Coinage Connections
Thursday Aug 25, 2022
Thursday Aug 25, 2022
The United States Mint has been in Philadelphia since 1792. It has produced billions of coins, from half-pennies to 20-dollar gold double eagles. Many of the early officers were Philadelphians. In this podcast, you will hear about doubloons and trimes, Peter the eagle, the California gold rush and Colorado's Comstock lode, greenbacks, Gresham's law, and more. And you will hear some bad poetry.
Think of this podcast as a four-parter.
1) Development of the Mint
2) Mint Directors Robert Patterson (father) & Robert Maskell Patterson (son)
3) Mint Director James Ross Snowden (uncle) & Mint Supervisor A. Loudon Snowden (nephew)
4) Painter, poet, playwright, and numismatist Augustus Goodyear Heaton
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Thursday Aug 11, 2022
BBB #011: The Red Rose Girls and Henrietta Cozens
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
Thursday Aug 11, 2022
This is a story about mutual love and respect among four women at the turn of the 20th century. All students of art know of the Red Rose Girls - illustrators Jessie Willcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green and muralist Violet Oakley. They became masters of their craft because of a fourth woman, Henrietta Cozens, who served as their mother, wife, nurse, gardener, cook, and muse. She is interred at Laurel Hill West. Without her, it is unlikely the Red Rose Girls would have existed.
Sunday Jul 24, 2022
ABC #041: Three More Drinker Siblings to Know - Harry, Cecil, and Kitty
Sunday Jul 24, 2022
Sunday Jul 24, 2022
Henry Sandwith "Harry" Drinker was a brilliant Philadelphia lawyer and a famed musicologist who befriended the von Trapp family when they arrived at Ellis Island. His wife Sophie Hutchinson Drinker was one of the founders of women's musicological and gender studies.
Cecil Drinker, MD, was a gifted physiologist who published more than 250 papers and did the original studies on The Radium Girls. His wife Katherine Rotan Drinker, MD, was his lifelong partner in research and publications.
Catherine "Kitty" Drinker Bowen was an accomplished amateur violinist who wrote best-selling and prize-winning biographies and history tomes, although she never earned a college degree.
Three more members of the Drinker family for you know, all buried together on a hillside at Laurel Hill West. Plus, you will learn about the iron lung, the Philadelphia origins of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and an amateur choir of 150 voices that gathered every Sunday evening for 30 years without ever performing in public. It's another jam-packed edition of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories.
Friday Jul 08, 2022
BBB #010: Lincoln’s Railroad Man - Herman Haupt
Friday Jul 08, 2022
Friday Jul 08, 2022
In the mid-19th century, Philadelphia-born Herman Haupt was probably the top railroad engineer in the country - and he knew it. During the Civil War, his mastery of the rails provided the Union Army with thousands of tons of supplies, saved hundreds of lives, and may have preserved the Union’s victory at Gettysburg. Except to railroad buffs, he is little remembered today.
Friday Jun 24, 2022
ABC #040: Friends of Thomas Jefferson, Part 1 - I’m Just a Bill
Friday Jun 24, 2022
Friday Jun 24, 2022
William Short was the first appointment to public office conferred under the Constitution of the United States. Thomas Jefferson thought so much of him that he happily called him "my adoptive son."
William Duane was the radical publisher of the "Philadelphia Aurora" who helped get Jefferson elected President against Federalist John Adams in 1800.
And Colonel William Drayton was a veteran of the War of 1812 and a Unionist from South Carolina whose father had exchanged dozens of letters with Jefferson on many topics, especially agriculture.
Welcome to All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories podcast #040 for July 2022 - Friends of Thomas Jefferson, Part 1: I'm Just a Bill.
Thursday Jun 09, 2022
BBB #009: A Forgotten Pioneer in Gender Studies - Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley
Thursday Jun 09, 2022
Thursday Jun 09, 2022
Helen Bradford Thompson turned the understanding of gender roles on its head. Her groundbreaking work at the turn of the 20th century, summarized in her PhD thesis "The Mental Traits of Sex," exploded on the psychology scene like nothing that had come before it. And yet the name Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley was little remembered for decades, only recently being rediscovered because of the blossoming of feminist studies. She is interred at Laurel Hill West.
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Friday May 27, 2022
WALKING TOUR: West Laurel Hill from Barmouth to Pencoyd
Friday May 27, 2022
Friday May 27, 2022
If you have walked or ridden your bike through West Laurel Hill Cemetery from the entrance just off the Cynwyd Trail all the way to the Pencoyd exit on Righter’s Ferry Road, you have probably passed dozens of mausoleums and gravesites that you had questions about. Now there’s an audio narration to help you quench your curiosity. It is done by Joe Lex, the same person who researches and narrates Laurel Hill’s twice-monthly podcasts “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories” and “Biographical Bytes from Bala: West Laurel Hill Stories.” Find out about William Luden, inventor of the mentholated cough drop; Charles Harrah, who made his fortune in Brazil; Eldridge Reeves Johnson, inventor of the Victrola, and many more. And at long last, you can discover the mystery of “Cocktails at Six.” The tour covers only people interred on the right-hand side of the road and takes about 40 minutes. Look for its companion audio covering the other side from Pencoyd back to Barmouth in a few months.
Thursday May 26, 2022
ABC #039: In Heaven There Is No Beer- Brewers of Laurel Hill
Thursday May 26, 2022
Thursday May 26, 2022
Thursday May 12, 2022
BBB #008: Every Writer’s Writer, Every Human’s Human - Loren Eiseley
Thursday May 12, 2022
Thursday May 12, 2022
Loren Eiseley grew up in a troubled family on the plains of Nebraska and drifted across the American West on trains during the Great Depression. Yet during his life he earned 36 honorary degrees and was one of the most respected researchers, educators, and writers in the country. He was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science, and the curator of the Early Man section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Like Henry David Thoreau, his writings on man and nature are treasured to this day. When Eiseley died in 1977, many people felt as though they had lost a close personal friend, even if they never met him. Science-fiction author Ray Bradbury remarked that he "is every writer's writer, and every human's human ... One of us, yet most uncommon ..."
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Thursday Apr 21, 2022
ABC #038: Through the Looking Glass: Lewis Carroll Connections
Thursday Apr 21, 2022
Thursday Apr 21, 2022
Friday Apr 08, 2022
BBB #007: Altering History - Francis, Clara, and Susanna Dercum
Friday Apr 08, 2022
Friday Apr 08, 2022
Francis Xavier Dercum grew up in Philadelphia and trained as a neurologist. When President Woodrow Wilson had his massive stroke in 1919, Dercum was called in as consultant. Years later when Wilson's widow Edith wrote her memoirs, she insisted that it was Dr. Dercum who had encouraged her to run things while he recovered.
Francis's sister Clara also became a physician and spent much of her career giving charity care to the poor in Philadelphia, while working tirelessly for women's rights.
Their half-sister Susanna went in a different direction and became Leopold Stokowski's choice for the voice of Maria Aegyptica when he conducted the American premier of Mahler's 8th Symphony in 1916.
Three Dercums, three different stories for the April edition of Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories.
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Thursday Mar 24, 2022
ABC #037: Boies Will Be Boys - Senator Penrose and His Brothers
Thursday Mar 24, 2022
Thursday Mar 24, 2022
Tucked away in Laurel Hill South near the border with Fairmount Park is a family plot that – foot for foot – may have more interesting people than anyplace else in the cemetery.
Boies Penrose was the second smartest man in his class at Harvard, became a representative from Philadelphia to Harrisburg and speaker of the house before moving to Washington D.C. as State Senator where he spent the rest of his life.
His brother Charles Penrose was the only person with better grades in their Harvard class. Charles became a respected surgeon and gynecologist and brought the practice of surgery forward with his methods, along with leaving his name on a commonly used device.
Richard, named after his father, became a geologist and surveyed some of the great precious metal reserves in the American west. His will left millions of dollars to organizations which are in existence today because of him.
The baby of the group Francis had a mental breakdown in his teens and became a lifelong resident of an upper-class psychiatric hospital, but his legacy has been embellished all over the web by someone claiming to be his niece.
Plus, stories about political corruption in Philadelphia, gluttony, the Johnson County Range Wars, and a bizarre theory about the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic.
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Thursday Mar 10, 2022
BBB #006: A Life for Peace - Hannah Clothier Hull
Thursday Mar 10, 2022
Thursday Mar 10, 2022
Hannah Clothier Hull, daughter of a department store magnate, was a suffragette and a leader in the Women’s Peace Movement for more than 50 years. She was the wife of one of the great Quaker historians and peace activists William Isaac Hull. They both lived a Life for Peace.
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Thursday Feb 24, 2022
ABC #036: The Three Remarkable Wister Sisters
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
Three Victorian Philadelphia sisters helped make Philadelphia what it is today.
The oldest Mary Channing Wister petitioned for music in the public schools, more public parks for all, and placement of the Broad Street line underground.
Frances Anne Wister was a founder of the Philadelphia Orchestra and became the city’s patron saint of preservation; without her there would likely be no Old City or Society Hill.
The youngest sister Ella Wister Haines got a late start on her career but became the public face and voice of Philadelphia Electric Company for 20 years, especially during the Great Depression.
All three of these women are buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery. I tell their stories today.
Thursday Feb 10, 2022
Thursday Feb 10, 2022
Raymond Pace Alexander was born in Philadelphia to former enslaved people, but graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and became the go-to civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia. In 1959, he became the first black judge to sit on the Court of Common Pleas.
His wife Sadie Tanner Mossell came from a pioneering middle-class family and was the first Black women to earn an economics degree in the US, but then also became a lawyer. Together they spent their lives battling racism in Philadelphia.
Thursday Jan 27, 2022
ABC #035: Four Black Trailblazers
Thursday Jan 27, 2022
Thursday Jan 27, 2022
Ira de Augustine Reid was one of the top sociologists in the country in the late 1940s, but because of his scholarship, he got swept up in the “Red Scare” of the mid-20th century. Dennie Hoggard, Jr., of West Philadelphia was a tight end at Penn State who helped to integrate the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on New Year’s Day of 1948. Marion Stokes had an obsession – to videotape every cable news program on television, and she did so for almost 35 years, amassing a treasure-trove of history. And Joseph Beam could not find any literature by Black gay men like himself, so he put together a best-selling anthology. These four found their final resting place at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd. I will tell their stories in this month’s edition of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Four Black Trailblazers.”
Thursday Jan 13, 2022
BBB #004: The Music Man - Theodore Presser
Thursday Jan 13, 2022
Thursday Jan 13, 2022
Theodore Presser got a late start in his career, but he ended up making millions of dollars from publishing a magazine for music teachers around the world, and then by selling them sheet music. And then he gave away much of his money in his lifetime and the endowments he left continue to aid music students across the country. His story is inspiring and his legacy is huge.