All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories
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.
Episodes
BBB 059, part 3 Jáni Szántó...
...was a masterful violinist and instructor who escaped the Nazis with the help of Pope Pius XII and settled in Philadelphia as instructor. One of his old instruments was the "Lord Borwick" Stradivarius, built in 1702.
BBB:LHWS 059-2 Wilhelm von Wymetal ...
... was an Austrian emigree with a dueling scar who took his expertise with opera to Hollywood, where he directed stars like Nelson Eddy & Jeannette McDonald, and to Pittsburgh, where he shepherded the Civic Light Opera through its early days of success.
BBB:LHWS 059-1 Oscar "Papa" Schwar ...
... was a German timpanist whom Leopold Stokowski praised as the best in the business. His rumblings and poundings on kettle drums kept the Philadelphia Orchestra on its toes for more than 40 years. You'll hear lots of drumming in this one.
BBB:LHWS 059 An estimated 1500 musicians ...
...fled central Europe's political turmoil in the 1930s and 1940s.
- Tympani player Oscar “Papa” Schwar came from Germany; Leopold Stokowski considered him the best kettledrum player he had ever heard.
- Wilhelm von Wymetal came from Austro-Hungary, dueling scar and all, to New York City, where he introduced and produced more than a dozen new operas at the...
ABC:LHS #089-6 OPTIONAL COUNTERFACTUAL...
...history of the United States when I asked CoPilot to create a country that abolished slavery at its beginning and then limited immigration. It gave me a startling picture of an unrecognizable country.
This section is almost exclusively generated by CoPilot.
ABC:LHS 089-5 In 1851, Lancaster County ...
... had become home to many self-emancipated formerly enslaved people. When slave hunters showed up to reclaim their "property," the people of Christiana gathered to protect their own. What resulted was the largest treason trial in United States history.
ABC:LHS 089-4 Robert Stewart Ralston...
...was attacked and severely wounded by his servant who had been his enslaved valet. The result was destruction of Black neighborhoods.
ABC:LHS 089-3 Stephen Duncan...
...was a Pennsylvanian who became a Natchez planter. Over a 50-year career, he accumulated tens of thousands of acres of land and more than 2200 enslaved human beings. But he firmly believed that slavery worked best under the US legal system and would only be destroyed by secession.
ABC:LHS 089-2 John Bohlen...
...and his brother Bohl made a world for themselves in the colonies as merchants whose offerings including liquor and people. German-speaking immigrants were common in the colonies, but especially in Pennsylvania.
ABC:LHS 089-1 More than 1500 enslaved people...
...lived in Philadelphia at the time the colonies declared their independence from England. Enslaved people shared the streets with indentured servants, freed Blacks, immigrants, visitors, and more than 50 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was essential to the economy.
This segment was released early as a separate podcast but included in the full r...
ABC:LHS #089
...slavery was an essential part of the colonial economy. The enslaved people of President George Washington have been in the news recently.
John and Bohl Despite Philadelphia's northern location...Bohlen were German immigrants who made their fortunes in the New World dealing with "gin and slaves," according to their relatives.
Stephen Duncan was simultaneously a Pennsylvania businessman and a N...
BBB:LHWS #058 Seo Jae-pil, aka Philip Jaisohn...
...was the first Korean to become a US citizen, but he never gave up on his lifelong dream to return Korea to its own independence. In 1919, he chaired a Philadelphia meeting that ended with a march through the rain to the room where it happened at Independence Hall and the reading of a new Declaration of Independence.
ABC:LHS #088-2 GEN John Clifford Pemberton ...
... was a Philadelphian who threw his lot with the Confederacy, despite his graduation from the US Military Academy, where he had briefly roomed with George Gordon Meade. Jefferson Davis put him in charge at Vicksburg, where he was forced to surrender to Ulysses S. Grant after a 47-day siege.
ABC:LHS #088-1 Major General George Gordon Meade...
...took command of the Army of the Potomac with almost no warning and promptly led it to victory at Gettysburg. But instead of being remembered simply as the general who stopped Robert E. Lee, he spent much of his life defending what he did next. This is the story of Meade’s command, his caution, and his contested legacy.
ABC:LHS #088 July 4, 1863...
...is the day that the Confederacy knew their days were numbered. At Gettysburg, Philadelphian General George Gordon Meade stopped Pickett's charge and sent Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back south licking their wounds. On the same day, Philadelphian and Confederate General John Clifford Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant after a 47-day siege. The two men, w...
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.
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.
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.
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 fi...
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
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