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All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

Joe Lex

Hundreds of brief biographies of permanent residents of Laurel Hill East in Philadelphia and Laurel Hill West in Bala Cywnyd, Pennsylvania. Often educational, always entertaining.

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34 episodes
Avg 57 min
English

Episodes 34

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#536
Thursday · 38 min
Ferdinand Hassler: Swiss Movement
ABC:LHS 092-4 Ferdinand Hassler ... ...was a Swiss immigrant with a passion for precision. As Lewis & Clark explored the interior of the new continent, Hassler was doing the painfully slow accurate mapping of the coastline. When he got tired of inaccuracies in trying to duplicate measurements, he established the standard for weights & measures that the country uses to this day. He is celebrated as both the founder of NOAA and the Bureau of Weights and Measures.
#535
Wednesday · 42 min
Thomas Ustick Walter: Constructing the Capitol
ABC:LHS 092-3 Thomas Ustick Walter ... ... was a classical architect who followed in the footsteps of Jefferson. Locally he remembered for Girard College and Moyamensing Prison, but the world knows his work as the architect for the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
#534
Tuesday · 48 min
Jonathan Williams and the Founding of West Point
ABC:LHS 092-2 Jonathan Williams ... ... was Benjamin Franklin's grandnephew who learned much from his elder relative. When Thomas Jefferson reluctantly established the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1802, Williams is the man he trusted to establish its goals and traditions. His imposing portrait by Thomas Sully greets you in the Early American galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
#533
Monday · 47 min
GEN Hugh Mercer: From Culloden to Princeton
ABC:LHS 092-1 Hugh Mercer’s... ...life took him from Culloden to Princeton, across an ocean and through two rebellions. A Scottish physician driven into exile, he rebuilt his life on the Pennsylvania frontier and in Virginia before becoming one of George Washington’s trusted generals. This episode separates the man from the legends, following Mercer as doctor, soldier, and Revolutionary martyr. It also traces his afterlife in monuments, paintings, place-names—and the Laurel Hill memorial that became the logo of All Bones Considered.
#537
November 1 · 3 hr 26 min
Jeffersonian Connections: Part III - Mercer; Williams; Hassler; Walter
ABC:LHS 092 Thomas Jefferson ... ... had enough connections in Philadelphia that more than a score are buried at Laurel Hill. General Hugh Mercer, MD, was a good friend to Washington, but his influence on all the Founding Fathers was inescapable. He died from the Battle of Princeton. Jonathan Williams was not a military man, yet Jefferson trusted him to establish a United States Military Academy that would not be a threat to the government. Thomas Ustick Walter shared a first name and a passion for classical architecture. Walter's massive Capitol Dome has become an iconic symbol of our nation. Ferdinand Hassler was the Swiss immigrant whose passion for precision made him the perfect developer of two essential services - the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations and the Bureau of Weights and Measures. Four stories of determination and persuasion in the early days of the Republic.
#532
October 9 · 1 hr 55 min
From Beagling to Barbaro: Horses, Hounds, the Main Line, and Laurel Hill
BBB:LHWS #061 Horses and foxhunting... ... can be traced from medieval hunting forests to the horse country of Philadelphia’s Main Line. Discover how hounds, riders, breeders, and civic-minded families shaped the Devon Horse Show and the region’s enduring equestrian culture. Along the way, meet the Laurel Hill figures whose stories connect centuries of sport, society, and stewardship—culminating in the unforgettable legacy of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro.
#528
October 6 · 23 min
Frank Whiteside: An Incident on Waverly
ABC:LHS 091-5 Frank Reed Whiteside... ...was an artist and instructor at PAFA who was inexplicably assassinated when he answered his front door one evening. Despite many maddeningly tempting clues, his case remains unsolved nearly a century later.
#526
October 5 · 32 min
Jacqueline & Emily Powell: When a Mother Kills
ABC:LHS 091-4 Jacqueline Powell... ...was only 10 years old when her mother Emily Lippincott Powell shot her in sleep and then tried to take her own life. Emily spent the rest of her life in Friends Hospital.
#529
October 4 · 26 min
George Boehm: Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘em
ABC:LHS 091-3 George Boehm... ...was a workman on the Baldwin floor in 1870 when a quarrel with a co-worker led to his own death from a crushed skull and his assailant's trial and imprisonment. This segment walks you through the justice system of 1870s Philadelphia.
#527
October 3 · 36 min
Roy Wilson White: Three Wrongs Don't Remake Roy White
ABC:LHS #091-2 Roy Wilson White... ...was a gifted young UPenn law instructor who in 1900 was robbed and killed near the campus. Drawing on contemporary newspapers and archival research, the podcast traces how racial panic, sensational reporting, coercive interrogation, and institutional pressure shaped the cases against Henry Ivory, Charles Perry, and Amos Stirling. The result is both a portrait of a promising life cut short and a cautionary account of how the demand for certainty can overwhelm justice.
#525
October 2 · 26 min
S. Morris Waln: Red Dog Meets His Maker
ABC:LHS 091-1 Samuel Morris Waln... ...was a wealthy Philadelphian who spent his free time in the "wild west" each summer until he and his companion were murdered in their sleep by their cook and guide. A cross stands in his memory in Wyoming.
#531
October 1 · 2 hr 45 min
Murder Most Foul, Part 2; Five More Slain Philadelphians
ABC:LHS #091 Murder was part of the background noise in some areas of Philadelphia. S. Morris Waln, born into one of Philadelphia’s founding families, was murdered by his guide and cook during an annual journey west. His stone at Laurel Hill is melting, while a monument in his honor still rises from the Wyoming plains. Roy Wilson White, a promising Penn Law scholar, was robbed and killed after an evening class. Three men were hanged for the crime—but how many were truly guilty? Baldwin Locomotive Works employee George Boehm died after a violent shop-floor attack. The man accused of killing him traveled a long path through the courts, Moyamensing Prison, and Eastern State Penitentiary. Learn of that journey on October 4th. Ten-year-old Jacqueline Powell was killed as she slept. Her mother, Emily, spent the rest of her life confined to an asylum for the crime. October 5th is the solo date for this one. Landscape artist and PAFA instructor Frank Whiteside was shot and killed by a home intruder who took nothing. The case remains unsolved—or does it? Tune in October 6th to find out or keep listening right now as we dive into ABC:LHS #091.
#530
September 28 · 1 hr 8 min
(BONUS) A Cabinet of Memory: When a Museum Closes
Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences... ...was open to anyone who wished to meet dinosaurs, birds, shells, fossils and the people who studied them. Now its public doors are closed, and I have come to Laurel Hill East to break that news to more than 50 of the founders, presidents, curators, collectors and supporters buried here. As we walk from grave to grave, we will follow the Academy from a rented room in 1812 to an internationally important museum—and ask how so much accumulated trust reached such an uncertain moment. This will not be an indictment delivered from a distance, but a careful conversation about the people who devoted their lives to the institution. Welcome to A Cabinet of Memory.
#524
September 15 · 1 hr 23 min
From the Silver Streak to Baby Nukes
BBB:LHWS 060 Edward G. Budd and Rupen Eksergian... ...were design and structural engineers who forced the Age of Steam into the Modern Era with their iconic Silver Zephyr Diesel Electric car in 1934. Eksergian took his skills further during the Cold War when he was one of the people behind Atomic Annie, a mobile artillery piece with a nuclear warhead. Both men rest at Laurel Hill West.
#519
September 6 · 38 min
Thomas E. Murphy: A Piece of the 1930s Phillies
ABC:LHS 090-5 Thomas E. Murphy ... ... knew virtually nothing about baseball, but found himself owning hundreds of shares of the Phillies during their horrible years of the 1920s and 1930s. He is remembered more as a yachtsman and a co-founder of Jupiter Island, Florida.
#522
September 5 · 25 min
OPTIONAL: What's in a (Nick)Name: Casual Othering in Baseball Nicknames
ABC:LHS #090-6 Many early baseball players ... ... were given nicknames that would never be tolerated today. We can never know how these players felt about being saddled with monikers like Chief, Three-Finger, Chico, Dummy, and Richie, based on being "othered."
#521
September 5 · 30 min
Joseph Howard Berry, Jr.: Penn's Greatest Athlete with a Problematic Nickname
ABC:LHS #90-4 Joseph Howard Berry, Jr. .... ...excelled at baseball, football, track and field, and life. He is in two Halls of Fame. He is little remembered today, partially because of a vile nickname that he carried from his days at Wharton through the rest of his life. His interment location is well hidden.
#520
September 4 · 18 min
Frank Bettger: A Successful Failure
ABC:LHS 090-3 Frank Bettger... (by guest host Rich Wilhelm) ...was a mediocre infielder for the Cardinals who blew out his shoulder and took to selling insurance, at which he was initially less than mediocre. He rebuilt his personality and his life to become one of the best motivational speakers of his day, often compared to Dale Carnegie.
#517
September 3 · 34 min
Frank Fleer Goes Pink
ABC:LHS #090-2 Frank Fleer... ...did not invent the gum that today carries his name, but his name has become synonymous with the pink chewy glob coveted by children of all ages worldwide.
#518
September 2 · 23 min
Francis Richter: Voice for Baseball
ABC:LHS #090-1 Francis Richter ... ...was a sportswriter who championed the new game through his newspaper work and the ubiquitous weekly Sporting Life, which was an essential read in the early 20th century. Richter is in the Baseball Hall of Fame ... sort of.

Showing 1–20 of 34 episodes