All Episodes

BBB:LHWS #051-3   Frank Dumont...
...was a seminal figure in minstrel culture. He began as a performer in a troupe that set the enduring standard format for minstrel shows. Dumont introduced popular songs such as “Silver Threads Among the Gold” and “When You and I Were Young, Maggie."

BBB:LHWS #051-2   E.F. Dixey & John Carncross...
...were the bedrock of Philadelphia minstrelsy for more than 20 years. Many people did not feel a trip to the Quaker City was complete if they didn't make a stop at the 11th Street Burnt Cork Opera House. I also discuss pigmentocracy, historical nonracial uses of blackface, scientific racism, Black Philadelphia society in the mid-19th century, and much more. 

BBB:LHWS #051-1   Human performance...
...has ancient roots in ritual, storytelling, music, and dance, evolving from prehistoric communal activities to formalized theater. Mumming originated in pre-Christian seasonal rites that involved masked performances which symbolized death and rebirth.
In the 19th century, minstrel shows featured white performers in blackface who caricatured African Americans through music and comedy, and popularized certain instruments and songs but perpetuating harmful stereotypes. Minstrelsy influenced American entertainment forms but reinforced racist myths, using exaggerated dialects, stereotypical characters, and appropriated dances, with complex legacies acknowledged by modern scholarship.

BBB:LHWS #051-0   Mummery & Minstrelsy in the City of Brotherly Love
Philadelphia has been the home of Mummers for centuries and you can still see their antics every New Year's Day. For the latter part of the 19th century, Philadelphia was also the place to see a minstrel show.
The Carncross & Dixey company made both of its owners rich men and provided entertainment for thousands of Philadelphians for mere pennies.
Frank Dumont literally wrote the book on how to perform a minstrel show.
James A. Bland is not buried at Laurel Hill, his music is still beloved by millions of people around the world, and one of his songs has been adopted by the Mummers as their theme. 

ABC:LHS #041-4   Benjamin Wood Richards...
...was mayor during a time with challenges like public health crises, infrastructure needs, and social tensions in Philadelphia. Richards helped found the Girard Trust Company in 1835 and served as its president. He was inspired by Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery on a European trip, and the helped found Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery.

ABC:LHS #081-3   Nathan Dunn...
...sailed as a merchant to China around 1818 and gained respect by avoiding the opium trade, rather engaging in tea, silks, porcelain, and other goods. He returned with a massive artifact collection and opened his wildly successful Chinese Museum in Philadelphia. Late in life, he was accused of illegal homosexual activity and put on trial for the crime of sodomy.

ABC:LHS #081-2   John Jay Smith served diverse roles as librarian, editor, cemetery founder, and member of the Society of Friends. He introduced paper made from straw, and invented something that sounds suspiciously like the Book of the Month club a century before the real thing. 

ABC:LHS #081-1 In the Beginning...Inspired by the allegory of Old Mortality, Laurel Hill was founded in 1836 by John Jay Smith, Benjamin Richards, Nathan Dunn, and Frederick Brown as response to overcrowded urban graveyards and changing attitudes toward death and memorialization.

ABC:LHS #081-0   The First 20 Years of Laurel Hill Cemetery
Laurel Hill Cemetery was founded opened in 1836 to give the people of Philadelphia a final resting place worthy of the "Athens of America." 
John Jay Smith was a polymath librarian / horticulturalist who had a rather unpleasant experience in seeking the grave of a recently deceased daughter and vowed to change the way people commemorated their dead.
Nathan Dunn was initially a failed merchant who regained his fortunes in the Chinese trade and became the financial backing for the cemetery corporation.
Benjamin Richards was ex-mayor and a business partner of Smith's who on a trip to Europe was inspired by the revolutionary Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to provide something similar in Philadelphia..
Druggist Frederick Brown was covered in a prior podcast
You will also learn about Sir Walter Scott, varying splinter sects of Christianity like the Swedenborgians, what the Opium Wars were really about, the history and significance of The Library Company of Philadelphia, with a brief look at Chinese male-male love as commemorated in the legend of the Cut Sleeve. 

BBB:LHWS #052-1   Lon Jourdet...
...was an All-American footballer who also excelled at basketball. He spent 23 years as coach at Penn and captured more than 200 victories, but he left in 1943 with a bitter taste in his mouth for the University, which has come close to forgetting him. He ended his own life in 1959. 

BBB:LHWS #050   Basket Ball started...
...on the day James Naismith nailed 13 rules to a gymnasium door in Springfield Massachusetts. The game spread quickly, especially among college men (and women). University of Pennsylvania was an early adapter, and four Penn grads made their names in basketball.
Ellwood Rutschman was a decent player but found his niche as the first professional basketball referee. He set the standards for fairness and ethics in the sport.
"Kid" Keinath was the Quakers' second coach after serving as captain. He was followed by his good friend "Artie" Kiefaber, namesake of the MVP award.
Lon Jourdet won more games in the 20th century than any other Penn basketball coach and was an inventor of the zone defense. But the game passed him by, and his firing in 1943 left him an embittered man. 

ABC:LHS #080-5   Hugh Craig, Jr. ...
...was a successful businessman whose life became the Troop, where he served both as treasurer and as quartermaster. The men loved him, and they still hold a "Hughie's Breakfast" at the conclusion of every deployment. 

ABC:LHS #080-4   Joseph Lapsley Wilson...
...is better remembered today for his arboretum than his troop membership. It still exists today as the Barnes Arboretum at St. Joseph's University. He introduced several species of Asian trees to the United States. His portrait by Thomas Eakins hangs in the Armory Museum. 

ABC:LHS #080-3   Archibald Loudon Snowden...
...was a polymath who served as Captain of the Troop, as well as postmaster for the city, supervisor of the Philadelphia mint, ambassador to Spain, along with numerous other roles. His portrait is in the armory dining room, and his descendants entertain millions of people. 

ABC:LHS #080-2   Fairman Rogers...
...lived a life of elegant wealth but made himself useful as an expert in many aspects of science, especially civil engineering. He served briefly as captain of the Troop. He excelled as a coachman, especially when he took his magnificent black and red four-in-hand through Fairmount Park. Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins captured Rogers in a painting that is the first to accurately demonstrate motion in animals.