All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #045: Stogies, Coffin Nails & Spittoons, part 3

Caleb Milne was a Scottish immigrant who made his fortune in textiles.  He rented a floor to a cigar maker, who had a habit of hiring immigrant girls who spoke no English.  A fire "false alarm" panicked the girls, who stampeded the stairwells.  Many died.  

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #045: Stogies, Coffin Nails & Spittoons, part 2

Otto Eisenlohr and his brother were German immigrants who learned the tobacco business.  Their 5-cent cigar 'Cinco' was sold at every cigar stand in the country, and they got quite rich.  

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #045: Stogies, Coffin Nails & Spittoons, part 1

Juan Portuondo was a Cuban immigrant who learned the craft of cigar making from his father.  His cigars were always of the highest quality and he was constantly swatting away competition that tried to take advantage of his name.

At one time, there were more than 900 cigar makers in Philadelphia who made a sizable portion of the 7 billion cigars sold every year in the United States. 

• Cuban native Juan Portuondo featured a top-quality cigar that was copied by many.

Four stories of tobacconists and their wares in the December edition of "All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories."

Biographical Bytes from Bala #014

What do baseball Hall-of-Famers Frank Robinson and Willie Stargell, a library in Northeast Philadelphia, the towns of Radnor and Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a bed and breakfast in Tennessee, and the Wills Eye Hospital have in common?  The thread that connects these disparate entities is Bushrod Washington James, a Philadelphia physician and philanthropist who is interred at Laurel Hill West.  Find out why his name is quietly known across the country in this month's episode of Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories.

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All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #044 - Sam Randall, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, Dr. C.K. Mills, and the Garfield Memorial: Laurel Hill & Some James Garfield Connections, part 4

Many familiar names from Laurel Hill were involved in the design, construction, and dedication of the memorial to the assassinated President that was dedicated in 1896 - 15 years after the assassination.

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #044 - Sam Randall, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, Dr. CK Mills, and the Garfield Memorial: Laurel Hill & Some James Garfield Connections, part 3

Local anatomist Dr. Charles K. Mills, MD, performed autopsy on the assassin Charles Guiteau.  Parts of his brain ended up in the Mütter Museum. 

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #044 - Sam Randall, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, Dr. CK Mills, and the Garfield Memorial: Laurel Hill & Some James Garfield Connections, part 2

Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, MD, learned his craft well while caring for wounded soldiers during the Civil War.  He was one of the first to be summoned to the President's after when he was shot

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #044 - Sam Randall, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, Dr. CK Mills, and the Garfield Memorial: Laurel Hill & Some James Garfield Connections, part 1

Samuel Jackson Randall defeated Garfield three times for the position of Speaker of the House until Garfield leapfrogged him to become the 1880 candidate.

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #044

James Abram Garfield was the 20th President of the United States, a “dark horse” candidate in the 1880 election and the only sitting member of the house to ever be elected to the highest office in the land.  His time as president was short, and four months into his term he was shot by a crazed office seeker in Washington.  After lingering for 10 weeks, he died in New Jersey.  What are his Laurel Hill connections? 

• Philadelphia’s Samuel Jackson Randall defeated Garfield for Speaker of the House three times before Garfield leapfrogged him to become President.

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