All Episodes

ABC:LHS #043-2   Henry Voigt...
...built a special clock for Thomas Jefferson that he used for his astronomical experiments until the day he died.  You can see clocks made by Voigt and his son Thomas both at Monticello and in the US Senate. 

ABC:LHS #043-1   How did we keep time in Philadelphia...
...from sundials and hourglasses to the clock on Independence Hall,  Philadelphia has had skilled clock and watchmakers since colonial times. 

ABC:LHS #043   
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 Voigt 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...

BBB:LHWS #012   Cynthia DeLores Tucker...
...was a Philadelphia born and raised Civil Rights champion through the 1960s and 1970s as she worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, and Cecil B. Moore. She spent her later years fighting what she saw as the pornography and misogyny 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  She was vilified by the music community, which spared no words in trying to show how sad and out-of-date her thinking was.

ABC:LHS #042-4   Augustus Goodyear Heaton...
...was a coin collector who wrote doggerel poetry about his collection.  He was also an accomplished painter, as one of his works hangs in the U.S. Senate

ABC:LHS #042-3   James Ross Snowden...
...oversaw the minting of commemorative coins which were sold to help support the expenses of running the mint.  His nephew Archibald took over where he left off.  

ABC:LHS #042-2   Robert Patterson...
...and his son Robert Maskell Patterson were two of the innovative early mint directors that kept it from failing. 

ABC:LHS #042-1
If you live in Philadelphia, you know about the Philadelphia mint at 5th and Arch.  This is our 4th mint in Philadelphia.  The first opened in 1792 just a few hundred feet away from the current one.  Billions of coins have been pressed in its highly efficient, highly secure building.  Thousands of Philadelphians have worked at the mint, and many of them served as either Director or Superintendent.

ABC:LHS #042   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.

BBB:LHWS #011   The Red Rose Girls...
...were three fabulously successful artists who developed mutual love and respect 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.

ABC:LHS #041-3   Catherine "Kitty" Drinker Bowen...
...was "unpaintable" according to her artist aunt Cecilia Beaux. Kitty made a career by writing award-winning history books and biographies, despite a lack of training in history or in literature.  She was also a superb violinist.

ABC:LHS #041-2   Cecil Kent Drinker, MD...
...was founder of the Harvard School of Public Health and with his wife Dr. Katherine Rotan Drinker became primary investigator of the "Radium Girls."

ABC:LHS #041-1   Henry Sandwith “Harry” Drinker...
...was a lawyer extraordinaire, amateur musician par excellence, and rescuer of the von Trapp family.  The music parties given by Harry and his wife Sophie were legendary, and his collection of choral music is available for whomever wants to borrow it from the Philadelphia Library. 

ABC:LHS #041   Three More Drinker Siblings
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 episode of All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories.

BBB:LHWS #010   Herman Haupt...
...was 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.