All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 5

Philadelphian Henry Naglee was a West Point graduate who fought in Mexico, the West, and the Civil War. He took a liking to the West Coast and built the first permanent commercial structure in San Francisco, installed vineyards that produced the finest brandy in the country, and is namesake for the Naglee Park section of San Jose. But he was a scoundrel with women, one of whom ...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 4

Rat Catcher Lou Bossle was proud of his profession - it is even carved onto his Laurel Hill West tombstone. Twice in the 1890s, Philadelphia newspapers sent a reporter to keep him company in rat-infested basements while he was on the job.

I'll tell you about the long relationship between humans and rats, and share some of the methods used by ratcatchers of yore. 

If you're a li...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #76, part 3

Mabel Tinley was a Philadelphia-born con woman with a hypnotizing gaze who worked her way into New York Society with boldness and beauty. Fellow cemetery historian Tom Keels tells her remarkable story and suggests an inscription for her stone - should she ever get one.

Here Lies

MABEL TINLEY

AKA

Mrs. Richard W. Roelofs, Fickle Wife and Inattentive Mother,

Lasca Vega, Vaudevill...

From All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076

This segment of the podcast talks about the evolution of the diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from nostalgia and soldier's heart to shell shock and battle fatigue and the thousand yard stare. 

W. Griffin Gribbel was a wealthy Chestnut Hill businessman and Great War veteran whose wealth, career, and family could not save him from his post-war nightmares. His behavior oft...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076, part 1

Morton McMichael Hoyt was named for his great-grandfather the mayor. His sister, Elinor Wylie, was a famed poet and author. Before he had turned 21, he married Jeanine Bankhead, older sister of up-and-coming actress Tallulah. When the marriage failed, they tried again. And then a third time. Then there's the time he jumped off a steamship on a bet ... or was it a dare ... to im...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #076

The July 2025 episode tells of five people who really didn’t fit anywhere else.

• Morton McMichael Hoyt married the same woman three times and once jumped off a steamship to impress a 17-year-old girl.
• Major Wakeman Griffin Gribbel was gassed and wounded during the Great War; during one of several psychotic breaks, he mortally wounded a police officer, but a jury found him “not gu...

Biographical Bytes from Bala #045 for mid-June 2025

The card games whist and bridge arrived in Victorian Philadelphia and captivated its upper-class population. Bridge clubs formed all over town, but people soon realized the man in the know was Milton C. Work, a Philadelphia lawyer. A scoring system that Work popularized for contract bridge remains the one that most players use today.

Learn about the history of playing cards, the d...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #075, part 4

Baron von Munchausen was a German military man who traveled the country spreading his tales of wonder, which always featured himself in the role of a hero. Clarence Wiener came from a wealthy Philadelphia family.  He started to burnish his reputation during his brief stay at Harvard. Eventually, truth and fiction blended together. His widowed mother married an American-born vio...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #075

In the late 19th and early 20th century, more than 450 American heiresses traded their fortunes for a European title; they were called "dollar princesses."

Elizabeth Shindler Stetson was the hatmaker's third wife who married into a Portuguese title.

Roberto Carles Eskens claimed Belgian nobility as Marquis d'Eskens de Frenoys; or was he a German valet with a good story and a vivid im...

Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories #044 for mid-May, 2025

John W. “Jack” Merriam made his fortune in real estate development – Oxford Valley Mall, Cedarbrook Apartment Complex, and many others. Among his acquisitions was the Curtis Publishing Building on Washington Square, with its magnificent Maxfield Parrish / Louis Comfort Tiffany glass mosaic in the lobby. Another was Maybrook Castle next to the Wynnewood ...

All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #074, segment 4

Alfred Reginald Allen, MD, was a UPenn med school grad, a clever researcher in neurologic injuries, a brilliant composer of operas and hymns, founder of the Savoy Company, and one of the finest photomicrographers in the world. But when he joined the Army, it was as a combat officer. He was killed, ironically, by shrapnel to his brain at Meuse Argonne. He has a cenotaph at La...

Excerpt from All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories #074, part 1

The United States tried to stay out of the European conflict that started in 1914 but eventually joined the fray. Philadelphia, "The Workshop of the World," provided doughboys with blankets, footwear, and head gear. By the time the US Congress declared war in April, 1917, hundreds of Americans had already been fighting, and many had died, the first of more than 125...