All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

• Ira de Augustine Reid was one of the top sociologists in the country in the late 1940s, but because of his scholarship, he got swept up in the “Red Scare” of the mid-20th century. 

These four found their final resting place at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd.  I will tell their stories in this month’s edition of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories – Four Black Trailblazers.”

Theodore Presser got a late start in his career, but he ended up making millions of dollars from publishing a magazine for music teachers around the world, and then by selling them sheet music.  And then he gave away much of his money in his lifetime and the endowments he left continue to aid music students across the country.  His story is inspiring and his legacy is huge.  

Tennis came to the United States in the 1870s and was quickly taken up by the East Coast upper crust, the nouveau riche of the Gilded Age. 

• Germantown’s Clarence Clark became one of its primary organizers, and his good friend and neighbor Frederick Winslow Taylor joined him as a doubles partner. 

All five of these men are interred at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd.  

This is the story of a woman who was so beautiful that she turned down more than 50 marriage proposals before she wed a newspaperman who became the United States’ first ambassador to the Soviet Union, and who then had an affair with one of the most famous illustrators of the 20th century, and who married a second time to a famed opera composer, and who then spent World War II as a radio propagandist pushing for the rights of women, and then spent years in New York City running one of the most exclusive weekly salons in the city. Welcome to the wonderful story of Aimee Ernesta Drinker Bullitt Beaux Barlow, aka "Commando Mary."

Photography in its infancy made its way to Philadelphia in 1839, literally weeks after Louis Daguerre invented the technique that carries his name. 

• Lampmaker Robert Cornelius was interested and took what is now recognized as the first “selfie.” 

All four of these photography pioneers are buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery or West Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Harold Hering Knerr came from a family of physicians and engineers, but rather than joining them he became an illustrator and cartoonist.  For 35 years he drew one of the most popular comic strips in the United States, The Katzenjammer Kids.   

• Annie Inglis spent her brief life in a wheelchair, but her dying wish was to make her prized possession, a one-dollar gold piece, into something which would help others. 

Alan Calvert was a Philadelphia bodybuilder who found that available equipment did not meet his needs, so he invented what we now recognize as the modern barbell and the science of progressive resistance.  His innovations have now become a standard around the world.  

• Wes “The Icicle” Fisler scored the first run in major league history but lay in an unmarked grave at Laurel Hill for more than 90 years.

All are interred at Laurel Hill East or Laurel Hill West.  Even if you're not a baseball fan, I think you will like these stories.  

• Joseph Clay Neal, whom many called “the American Dickens,” started his writing career with an evening newspaper “The Daily Courier,” and ended up fostering the career of a teenage girl who became one of the primary woman authors of the 19th century. 

The three of them came together for several years in the 1830s and 1840s to produce two moderately successful publications, and inspire another young author named Edgar Allan Poe.  All of this and more in the September 2021 edition of “All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories.”

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