All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

By Joe LexSociety & Culture Documentary Education History

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories episodes

November 01Jeffersonian 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.
3 hr 27 min
October 09 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.
1 hr 56 min
October 06 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.
24 min
October 05 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.
33 min
October 04 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.
27 min
October 03 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.
37 min
October 02 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.
27 min
October 01Murder 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.
2 hr 46 min
September 28 (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.
1 hr 9 min
September 15 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.
1 hr 24 min

About All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

From the publisher's feed

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.