Episodes
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
BBB#034: Sweet Tooth - Wilbur, Baker, Hershey
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
Almost everybody loves chocolate.
Henry Oscar Wilbur was a Philadelphia chocolatier who was probably most famous for his small chocolate pieces with his name on the bottom. He called them Wilbur Buds and offered a spirited competition to Milton Hershey’s Kisses.
Although Hershey is not buried locally, his beloved wife Kitty spent nearly three years in a receiving vault until a new cemetery was built in Hershey as her final resting place.
Grain merchant Franklin Baker once received a load of coconut as payment for a boatload of grain. Baker turned this serendipitous occurrence into a lifetime of working with coconut, such that the name “Baker’s” is almost synonymous with coconuts.
You’ll hear about these three Laurel Hill West residents - two permanent, one temporary - in this episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala #034 – Sweet Tooth: Wilbur, Baker, Hershey.
Monday Jul 01, 2024
ABC#064: Four More Olympians from 1904 to 1912
Monday Jul 01, 2024
Monday Jul 01, 2024
An earlier episode of All Bones Considered covered the 1900 Paris Olympiad and some Laurel Hill residents who participated. This month features four more Olympians from the early 20th century.
Lawson “Robbie” Robertson won medals in the Intercalated Games of 1906 in Athens and went on to become head coach of the University of Pennsylvania track and field team. He took them back to the Olympics several more times.
Jervis Watson Burdick was a UPenn student member of the Sphinx Club and the Canteen Club who competed in the1912 Olympics but did not medal.
James Edwin “Ted” Meredith was the fastest schoolboy in the country and broke every distance running record from 100 meters to 1 mile; his Gold in the 1912 Olympics was for the 4 x 400-meter relay.
And Donald Fithian Lippincott surprised everyone, including himself, when he won a silver and a bronze in 1912.
You will learn about these four athletes along with the jumbled letters of the AC4A, the AAU, the NCAA, and the IAAF on this month’s edition of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Four More Olympians from 1904 to 1912.”
Thursday Jun 13, 2024
BBB#033: Abram Winegardner Harris - A Forgotten Educator
Thursday Jun 13, 2024
Thursday Jun 13, 2024
Abram Winegardner Harris was one of the top educators in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
After he was schooled in Philadelphia and spent time with the Department of Agriculture, he served as president of the land grant school in Orono when it became the University of Maine. While there he helped establish the first general studies academic fraternity Phi Kappa Phi.
Then he spent a few years at a private secondary boarding school in Maryland where he established the Cum Laude Society for secondary school scholars.
Next stop: Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he was responsible for a massive expansion of the entire campus – gymnasium, stadium, science center, and much more. A tradition he began in 1916 continues more than a century later.
Harris is interred under a simple, tasteful stone next to the road in the River section of Laurel Hill West. It identifies him simply as “SCHOLAR / TEACHER / LEADER / FRIEND".
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
ABC#063: Curtain Up! Four Early Philadelphia Playwrights
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Americans struggled to establish their own identity as they separated from the British in the early 19th century. It was a time of blossoming for American theater and its playwrights, despite their receiving little honor and even less compensation.
- Richard Penn Smith wrote more than 20 plays but is best remembered today for inventing much of what we know as the legend of Davy Crockett.
- Robert Montgomery Bird was a physician who wrote a play for Edwin Forrest that became the basis for plays and movies into the 21st century; Forrest became rich, while Bird became an embittered man.
- Robert Taylor Conrad was a polymath whose writing was praised by Edgar Allen Poe and whose play Aylmere, or Jack Cade became another favorite of Edwin Forrest’s. He also served as Mayor of Philadelphia at the time of consolidation.
- George Henry Boker was one of Philadelphia’s most accomplished men – poet, playwright, politician, and co-founder of the Union League. He also solidified copyright laws in the United States so creators could be fairly paid. Oh – he was also minister to Turkey and Russia.
All four of these men are interred at Laurel Hill East and are little remembered today except by admirers and historians. I tell their stories in this episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Curtain Up! Four Philadelphia Playwrights”.
Wednesday May 15, 2024
BBB#032: Philadelphia's Jazz Lodestar - Dennis Sandole
Wednesday May 15, 2024
Wednesday May 15, 2024
Dennis Sandole was one of the best kept secrets in jazz. Born Dionigi Sandoli in South-Philadelphia-born, his teaching techniques were sought by Art Farmer, James Moody, Benny Golson, Jim Hall, and especially John Coltrane, who became his most famous student. Coltrane spent hours practicing daily to master the material that The Maestro gave him and turn it into his own sound, which eventually became “Sheets of Sound” and then “Coltrane Changes”.
Sandole rarely recorded or performed live but he was revered by those who studied under him. He is interred in the Mausoleum of Peace just a few feet from Disc Jockey Jocko Henderson on the other side of Righters Ferry Road.
Wednesday May 01, 2024
ABC#062: Three More Philadelphia Magazines - Graham's, Peterson's, and Lippincott's
Wednesday May 01, 2024
Wednesday May 01, 2024
Philadelphia has always been the magazine-publishing capital of the United States. It reached its pinnacle in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s when three popular magazines – Graham’s, Peterson's, and Lippincott's - all came into existence.
Graham’s was the best, even though it only lasted a few years. George Rex Graham would wheedle articles out of Longfellow and Thoreau, and published many stories by his co-editor Edgar Allan Poe.
Peterson’s magazine followed shortly and lasted a few years longer. Charles Peterson was a lifelong friend of Graham who started his own magazine and was ready to hand it off to his son, Howard, who mysteriously disappeared during a weekend trip down the shore. What his wife did at the time of her death 31 years later will touch your heart.
Joshua Ballinger Lippincott was a late comer with his Lippincott’s magazine, but it lasted longer than the others and served as the bedrock for the famed Lippincott Publishing Company which went through several generations of family leadership.
George Rex Graham, five members of the Peterson family, and several members of the Lippincotts are featured on this month’s episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #062 – Three More Philadelphia Magazines: Graham's, Peterson's, and Lippincott's.
Sunday Apr 14, 2024
BBB#031: Gladys Hall & Russell Ball - Glamourizing Early Hollywood
Sunday Apr 14, 2024
Sunday Apr 14, 2024
It wasn’t long after movies became ubiquitous in America that movie fan magazine appeared. Eventually there would be more than 20 of them.
Gladys Hall had a stellar reputation as a “safe” interviewer who could be depended on to tell a good story without any scandal. Her interview with Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi is one of the strangest things you could imagine.
She was married to glamour photographer Russell Ball, remembered today for his classic portraits of Louise Brooks, Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, and Gloria Swanson, who used Ball as her private photographer.
Gladys Hall and Russell Ball are interred in an unmarked grave in the Lansdowne Section of Laurel Hill East. If you like watching movies, you’ll love this podcast about their early days – the mid-April 2024 edition of Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #031 – Glamourizing Early Hollywood.
Monday Apr 01, 2024
ABC#061: Play Ball!, Part 3 - Four More Baseball Pioneers at Laurel Hill
Monday Apr 01, 2024
Monday Apr 01, 2024
Henry Walter “Slick” Schlichter started as a bantamweight and a boxing promoter who became a sportswriter and then partnered with Black baseball pioneer Sol White to organize the best Negro league team in the country at the turn of the 20th century.
Cub Stricker was a good fielding 2nd baseman with a hot temper who was arrested on the field to avoid fan rioting when he struck a heckler with a thrown ball.
Jack McFetridge was the best amateur pitcher in Philadelphia for years; when he finally went pro, he wasn’t that good.
Pete Childs was a fine 2nd baseman and served in the role for the 1902 Phillies. It was while serving as player-manager for an Ohio League team that he pulled the unfathomable feat of throwing one pitch as a reliever and getting three out.
These four men were born in a ten-year span, three are interred at LHW and one at LHE. They are featured in this month’s episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #061 for April 2024 – Play Ball!, Part Three – Four More Laurel Hill Baseball Pioneers.
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
BBB#030: Grayce Nottage Nicholas - Black Is Beautiful
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
Thursday Mar 14, 2024
Grayce Nottage-Nicholas was an older sister of Civil Rights activist C. Delores Tucker, but she made a name for herself as a teacher, parole officer, police detective, and beauty queen at a time when women of color were not welcomed to traditional beauty pageants.
In this episode I tell you about the evolution of beauty pageants, how pigmentocracy and straight hair defined beauty from a white perspective, how African American women created their own standards of beauty and started their own beauty pageants, and much more on this Women’s History Month Broadcast of Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories – Black Is Beautiful.
Friday Mar 01, 2024
ABC#060: Three More Women Who Changed Philadelphia
Friday Mar 01, 2024
Friday Mar 01, 2024
Woman have played a major but underrecognized role in our Nation’s history since its inception.
*London-born Esther DeBerdt Reed married a man who became George Washington’s right-hand man and switched her Tory allegiance to become a radial patriot; the organization she founded to provide some relief to the soldiers fighting for her freedom didn’t quite go the way that she had planned.
*Elizabeth Duane Gillespie came from a politically active family; she was the chief fundraiser and organizer for the Sanitary Fair of 1864, which put her in the position to lead the way for the Centennial Exposition of 1876.
*Anna Justina Magee was the last of seven siblings who lived together their entire lives. Her legacy for the family was a hospital designed for people who were convalescing from injury – The Magee Rehabilitation Hospital.
These three women are featured in this month’s episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #060 for March 2024 – Three More Women Who Changed Philadelphia.
Friday Feb 16, 2024
BBB#029: MOVE and Laurel Hill
Friday Feb 16, 2024
Friday Feb 16, 2024
In 1985, the City of Philadelphia did something unheard of in the United States – it dropped a bomb on one of its neighborhoods. The resulting fire killed 6 adult and 5 child members of a radical primitivist environmental anarchic group called MOVE. The fire spread along Osage Avenue, destroyed more than 60 homes, and left 250 men, women, and children homeless. Former MOVE members are interred in Nature’s Sanctuary, the green natural burial section at Laurel Hill West. Louise Leaphart James and LaVerne Leaphart Sims were sisters to the acknowledged group leader John Africa but left the organization before the conflagration. To tell their story, I must tell the story of John Africa, the formation of MOVE, and its frequent confrontations with neighbors and city officials in this month’s episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala #029: MOVE and Laurel Hill.
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
ABC#059: Three More Black Pioneers
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
Thursday Feb 01, 2024
The Black population of Philadelphia dates to Colonial times but expanded tremendously during the so-called Great Migration that started around 1910.
Sarah A. Anderson came from an educated family – her father was the first Black dentist in Florida and her husband was a politically active podiatrist. Sarah served 17 years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and quietly changed life for the better for thousands of Pennsylvanians, Black and white.
Samuel L. Evans was also from Florida and saw five lynchings before he was 10 years old. Through machinations that people are still pondering, he managed to make himself the “Godfather of Black Philadelphia” despite never being elected to public office. His wake was in City Hall.
Winifred Harris was the woman you wanted as your next-door neighbor. She rescued abandoned properties in West Philadelphia and converted them into vegetable gardens for the neighborhood, while planting more than 1000 trees for the city. Her shocking death at the hands of a home intruder was mourned by all who knew her.
For Black history month, learn about these three lesser-known heroes of Black Philadelphia in the February 2024 episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Three More Black Pioneers”.
Monday Jan 15, 2024
BBB#028: The Philadelphia Orchestra & Laurel Hill West
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Monday Jan 15, 2024
The Philadelphia Orchestra has been one of America’s “Big Five” philharmonics for more than a century. As it was being assembled in the late 1890s, it looked like the job of “first conductor” would go to local concertmaster and second generation Irish-American Harry Gordon Thunder, but instead the position went to Johann Friedrich Ludwig “Fritz” Scheel, a German immigrant with seemingly unlimited energies and innovations, but the job probably shortened his life.
In contemporary times, the first violinist chair was held for decades by Germantown-born William Joseph de Pasquale, a calm, dependable right-hand man to the conductor, and one of four brothers who played together in a string quartet.
These three men – Thunder, Scheel, and de Pasquale – are part of the reason that the Philadelphia Orchestra has its universal reputation. You can hear about them this month on “Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #028 – The Philadelphia Orchestra and Laurel Hill West."
Monday Jan 01, 2024
ABC#058: Laurel Hill & Big Pharma
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Monday Jan 01, 2024
Several multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies got their starts in Philadelphia as neighborhood drug stores.
Weightman, Powers, and Rosengarten made their money by selling quinine to the US government.
James Smith and Clayton French did not know each and both started as neighborhood druggists; but family and business partners kept their businesses going and their names prominent long after their deaths.
The Wyeth Brothers invented a machine that standardized the size of pills and tablets, and William Warner learned how to sugarcoat them. Warner’s pharmacopeia was distributed internationally and served as the standard reference for doctors and pharmacists for years.
And McNeil Laboratories introduced Tylenol Elixir for Children in 1955, then watched it become one of the best-selling over-the-counter meds of all time.
McNeil is interred at Laurel Hill West, while all the others are at Laurel Hill East. All of them have intriguing stories you will hear in this episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #058 – Laurel Hill and Big Pharma.
Wednesday Dec 27, 2023
BONUS: Anna Weightman Penfield and the Fioretta Follies
Wednesday Dec 27, 2023
Wednesday Dec 27, 2023
Anna Weightman Penfield, the only daughter of quinine king William Weightman, became the richest woman in the world when her father died. In 1929 when she was in her 80s, she decided that she wanted to produce a Broadway musical featuring songs by two young friends. She even managed to convince impresario Earl Carroll, the so-called “troubadour of the nude”, to write the book and produce it. He called it “Fioretta”. Carroll used it as a vehicle for his current girlfriend Dorothy Knapp, a chorus girl who could not sing, act, or dance. Despite the casting of vaudeville legends Leon Erroll and Fanny Brice, the show flopped and closed after just a few months, and Mrs. Penfield lost a bundle of money. Then, the talentless Knapp sued Penfield, Carroll, and the composers for lost wages. To tell this story, I read you a newspaper article from 1947 and part of a chapter from Carroll’s biography. It's a story not to be missed.
Friday Dec 15, 2023
BBB#027: An Old Soul Guitarist - Jack Rose
Friday Dec 15, 2023
Friday Dec 15, 2023
Jack Rose was an old soul guitarist who took John Fahey and other fingerpickers as role models. Born in Virginia in 1971, Rose moved to Philadelphia in 1998, where he became part of the alternative music scene. As he taught himself the primitive styles of Blind Blake, Charlie Patton, and others, he took on the name “Dr. Ragtime”.
His album “Raag Manifesto” was named one of the top 50 records of the year by British music magazine “The Wire”. Davendra Banhart included one of his songs in the compilation “Golden Apples of the Sun”. His fourth recording, “Kensington Blues”, was his breakthrough and he toured extensively.
Rose’s career was tragically cut short in 2009 when he died before his 39th birthday and just before the release of his 5th album “Luck in the Valley”. He is interred in the Nature’s Sanctuary section of Laurel Hill West, one of our green burial spaces.
But his music lives on.
Friday Dec 01, 2023
ABC#057: Murder Most Foul, Part 1
Friday Dec 01, 2023
Friday Dec 01, 2023
There are hundreds of people buried at Laurel Hill East and Laurel Hill West who were the victims of personal violence – accidental, intentional, and self-inflicted. This month’s episode tells you of nine people who were killed by others.
Author / historian Tom Keels will read you a chapter from his book “Wicked Philadelphia” that tells the amazing story of Singleton Mercer and Mahlon Hutchinson Heberton.
I will tell you of
* Mine supervisor George K. Smith who was purportedly killed by the Irish terrorist group the Molly Maguires
* Businessman George Haas, shot and killed on his lunch break by a disgruntled former employee
* Archibald McCurdy, night watchman in his brothers’ store who was killed when he discovered a burglary in process
* Ida Chadwick, a 9-year-old girl whose depressed father killed them both with illuminating gas
* C. Morgan Knight, Chestnut Hill financier and amateur yachtsman who died while attempting to capture a robber at Wanamaker’s.
There is also a new voice for you. Volunteer guide Sarah Hamill gives a sketch of a young mother and her two daughters who were shot to death by their disgruntled butler.
Murder Most Foul, Part 1 is the topic of the December 2023 episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories.
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
BBB#026: The Surgeon Is a General - I.S. Ravdin
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
Isidor Schwaner Ravdin was a second-generation American and a fourth-generation physician who combined research with surgery and completely changed the fields of both. During his 40+ years at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Ravdin rose to become Chief of Surgery and Director of Research.
During World War II, he ran what Vinegar Joe Stillwell called “the best g**d*** hospital in the Army” during the China Burma India campaign. When President Eisenhower was struck with a bowel obstruction in 1956, Ravdin was summoned to Washington to perform the surgery. He even appeared as a heroic character in a popular cartoon strip of his time.
If you have visited the HUP campus, you have almost certainly walked through the Ravdin pavilion. It is his story I will tell you in this episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala #026 – The Surgeon Is a General.
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
ABC#056: Philadelphia and Oil
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
Wednesday Nov 01, 2023
We don’t normally think of Philadelphia as being an oil town, but the Point Breeze refinery in South Philadelphia, easily visible from the Pratt Bridge on your ride to the airport, dominated the skyline for many decades with its storage tanks and distilling towers.
Born in the middle of Pennsylvania’s Titusville oil boom in the northwest corner of the state, J. Newton Pew established Sun Oil in 1890.
After its move to Philadelphia, Newton’s sons Howard and Joe Jr. ran the company for decades and established a refinery at Marcus Hook and the Sun Shipbuilding Company in Chester.
The Pews are known today for their charitable contributions throughout the city. The Pew Mausoleum at Laurel Hill West holds several generations of this prosperous philanthropic family.
Learn about oil, crude and refined, shipbuilding, philanthropy, and even some political intrigue in this month’s episode of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Philadelphia and Oil” from wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sunday Oct 15, 2023
BBB#025: Free Science for All - William Wagner
Sunday Oct 15, 2023
Sunday Oct 15, 2023
William Wagner was a self-taught naturalist and a very rich man who believed in giving free education to anyone who wanted it. He opened his Wagner Free Institute of Science in 1855 and used his own collection as teaching aids – flora and fauna from around the world, fossils, rocks, bones – tens of thousands of items. When Wagner died in 1885, his museum was improved by Joseph Leidy, “the last man who knew everything,” and further expanded. Now a visit to the Wagner in North Philadelphia is a trip back in time more than 130 years while it continues to give free classes on a variety of topics and to offer its archives and library as a resource to anyone interested in the natural sciences.