All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

By Joe LexSociety & Culture Documentary Education History

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Typical duration
35 min
per episode

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All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories episodes

June 18 Jeff Lee Johnson: Never "Just a Session Man"
BBB:LHWS #057-3 Jef Lee Johnson...
...played with everyone from Aretha Franklin to McCoy Tyner, primarily because he sounded like no one - except for the comparisons to Lonnie Johnson and Jimi Hendrix.
15 min
June 17 Winston Samuels: Israelites
BBB:LHWS #057-2 Winston Samuels McGinnis...
...was a Jamaican singer with a moderately successful career until he backed Desmond Dekker on the worldwide hit "Israelites." He became an accountant in New York City while the reggae that he had helped create took over the music world.
26 min
June 16 Rudolph Hennig: There's Always Room for Cello
BBB:LHWS #057-1 Rudolph Hennig...
...was a German born master of the cello who was the Philaldelphia Orchestra's first cello soloist after he had already been painted by Thomas Eakins. A century after his death, his portrait was again in the news.
19 min
June 15Three More Musicians from Laurel Hill West
BBB:LHWS #057 Three More LHW Musicians
Rudolph Hennig was the first cello soloist for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1901; a few years earlier, Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins had represented him in oils as The Cello Player, which was used as a bargaining chip more than a century later.
Winston Samuels McGinnis was a moderately successful Jamaican ska and rocksteady performer who sang backup in one of reggae's first worldwide hits "Israelites" by Desmond Dekker.
Jeffrey Lee Johnson, or simply JEF was the session guitarist who could apparently sound like anyone but was at his best when he sounded like Jef Johnson. The two usual comparisons are Lonnie Johnson ... and Jimi Hendrix.
1 hr 8 min
June 06 Rev William Smith: Penn's Forgotten Founder
ABC:LHS #087-5 Rev. William Smith...
...was a Scottish-born Anglican who impressed Benjamin Franklin with his ideas about higher education and set up the skeleton and backbone of what became the University of Pennsylvania today, but he made few friends and is little remembered today
28 min
June 05 Hilery Baker: Philadelphia's First "Officer Down"
ABC:LHS #087-4 Hilery Baker...
...was a German immigrant who became two-term mayor during the time when the city was also the nation's capital. He established the first city police force and was the first "Officer Down" in the city's history.
27 min
June 04 Alexander Murray: A Forgotten Commodore
ABC:LHS #087-3 Alexander Murray...
... came from a family that was part of the Scottish diaspora to the New World after the Jacobite Rebellion in the early 1700s. Born in Maryland, he was a ship's captain before he was out of his teens and rose to become a Commodore in the Navy. By the time he retired, he was a battle-hardened veteran with years at sea.
22 min
June 03 Thomas Godfrey: A New Way to See the Horizon
ABC:LHS #087-2 Thomas Godfrey...
...was one of the New World's first native inventors. While working as a glazier, he was intrigued by the reflection and refraction of light through a shard of glass. This led to his invention that made life on the seas easier and safer, and saved thousands of lives in the process.
25 min
June 02 Invitation to an Exhumation
ABC:LHS #087-1
The concept of "celebrity corpses" to attract customers to a cemetery was nothing new. People had been digging up other people for years for legal, political, religious, scientific, and other reasons, so why not for commerce? Many transportable cadavers have made interesting journeys to their final resting places.

19 min
June 01 Mobile Corpses from the 18th Century
ABC:LHS #087
Even in death, some people don’t rest easy. Someone always wants to dig them up and move them. Though Laurel Hill East opened in 1836, several of its 18th-century dead were buried elsewhere first.
First, I trace the many reasons people exhume the dead. And there are plenty.
Thomas Godfrey invented a lifesaving navigational instrument. Buried first on a Germantown farm, he was later pursued by Laurel Hill as one of its earliest celebrity corpses.
Commodore Alexander Murray was as important a sailor as Isaac Hull or Stephen Decatur, but without the headline-grabbing legend.
Mayor Hilary Baker served when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital and crossed paths daily with the signers of the Declaration and Constitution. He died in office.
Rev. William Smith deserves recognition alongside Benjamin Franklin as a cofounder of the University of Pennsylvania, yet Franklin is celebrated while Smith is largely forgotten.
I had a blast making this one. I think you’ll have fun listening.
2 hr 22 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.