All Bones Considered: Laurel Hill Stories

ABC:LHS #079-2   Potito "Little Petey" Bisciotti... ...was on the lower rungs of the mob but wanted to move up in the numbers racket. A rendezvous with fellow gangsters in a deserted tea room led to an untimely death by sawed-off shotgun. 

ABC079-1: How Crime Emerged in the Quaker City In the early 20th century, ethnic groups clashed over control of gambling operations, protection, the numbers racket, prostitution, and eventually bootlegging. These criminal enterprises weren’t just about making money, but were also about gaining power and influence, sometimes even forging ties with local politicians and the police.

ABC:LHS #079-0 Thugs and Gangsters   Some Laurel Hill residents are remembered today for their involvement with organized crime in the 1930s and 1940s.  Petito "Little Petey" Bisciotti was a wannabe numbers man killed in what has become known as the Flag Day Massacre. Willie Lanzetti was one of six notorious brothers in constant legal troubles; he met his end in a gangland slaying before his body...

BBB:LHWS #048   John Henry Fow... ...was a lawyer with two nicknames - "Ducky" for the walk and "Foghorn" for the talk. He was tough and had an uncanny knack for figuring out what was unconstitutional. He debunked the supposed story behind the famous “Washington Crosses the Delaware” painting and then seriously challenged the Betsy Ross flag anecdote.

ABC:LHS #078-5   LTC Edgar Loftus... ...was a Wharton grad who rose in the Army Air Corps to Lieutenant Colonel. On VE Day, he was ranking officer in charge when a small squadron of German Aces landed and then augured in their aircraft at his air base to end their war. One of them was Hitler's favorite pilot. Yes, this really happened. 

ABC:LHS #078-4   Jacques Louis Francine... ...from a well-established Philadelphia family was the ultimate outdoorsman who collected specimens for the Academy of Natural Sciences and established a canoe camp. He rarely mentioned that he was also decorated fighter pilot and bomber pilot with more than 30 missions to his name.

ABC:LHS #078-3   Holger Hoiriis... ...bought an airplane in 1924 and took up barnstorming. He was the first pilot to carry a paying customer across the Atlantic and the first pilot to complete night airmail delivery for the US Postal service. After the war a story emerged about the time he was hijacked by Nazi agents in the Catskills. 

ABC:LHS #078-2   The First Philadelphia Fliers Beer heir Grover Cleveland Bergdoll took to flight early; it is his Wright Brothers biplane that suspends from the ceiling of the Franklin Institute. He was also the most notorious American Draft Dodger during the Great War. You met Hobart Amory Hare "Hobey" Baker in ABC:LHS #019 when fellow guide Paul Sookiasian and I talked about his athletic prowes...

ABC:LHS #078-1   Thaddeus Lowe, who has relatives at Laurel Hill East, was the man who introduced the balloon to American warfare when he helped guide Union troops from 500 feet above the earth during the Battle of Fair Oaks. Until replaced by spy planes in the 20th century, balloons were one of the best surveillance tools in warfare. 

ABC:LHS #078-0   Look! Up in the Sky!  Thaddeus Lowe is not buried at Laurel Hill, but has many connections there. He was an balloon aeronaut during the Civil War, thus father of the United States Air Force.  Grover Cleveland Bergdoll's family is in a huge mausoleum at Laurel Hill West. An early student of the Wright brothers, he became a poster child for privilege when he dodged the draft during...

BBB:LHWS #057   Sara Louisa Oberholtzer... ...was a feminist, an abolitionist, and a temperance advocate who helped establish school bank accounts for millions of American children during the "Thrift" movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her legacy for thrift in Philadelphia is second only to Benjamin Franklin's.    

ABC:LHS #077-4   Antoinette Westphal... ...was a Dragon through and through. While a student in the late 1950s, she captained both field hockey and lacrosse teams, and wrote the newspaper's gossip column. She and fellow grad Ray Westphal married and started a family as Ray turned an idea into a successful business. After her death, Ray's donation caused creation of the Antoinette Westphal College...

ABC:LHS #077-3   Joseph Wharton... ...was a Quaker businessman and philanthropist and the primary founder of Swarthmore College. Fisher Park in northeast Philadelphia was his gift to the city. The Wharton State Forest in New Jersey is the largest mass of land owned by the state. And, of course, the world-famous business school that bears his name has graduated more eventual billionaires than any s...

ABC:LHS #077-2   Captain Henry Biddle... ...was wounded in the Battle of Glendale and died a few weeks later after having befriended his treating physician. His wife donated money in his name to found Biddle College in North Carolina, which has since changed its name to Johnson C. Smith University. His son Spencer Fullerton Baird Biddle was a Navy man who became a cattle rancher and introduced the...

ABC:LHS #077-1   Charles Macalester... ...established the town of Torresdale, founded Presbyterian Hospital, financially advised eight US presidents, and may have been the richest man in the world. A codicil in his will provided for the beginning of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of the top-ranked liberal arts schools in the country. The river mansion Glen Foerd stands as another o...

ABC:LHS #077   College Namesakes (part 1) Charles Macalester made a contribution that helped to turn a small liberal arts school into one of the finest small colleges in the land. Joseph Wharton made fortunes several times over, but is best remembered for starting what has become one of the top business schools in the country. Henry Biddle died from wounds received during the Peninsula campaign; h...

BBB:LHWS #046   Psychosurgery... ...dates back to the Neolithic period but became more prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. For about 30 years in the middle of the 20th century, medical wisdom had declared that destroying organically healthy brain tissue was a legitimate treatment for varying psychiatric disorders. The champion for destroying healthy brain tissue was a Philadelphia born-and t...

ABC:LHS #076-5   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 repaid him...

ABC:LHS #076-4   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...

ABC:LHS #076-3   Mabel Tinley... (by Thomas Keels) ...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, L...

ABC:LHS #076-2   Post Traumatic Stress Disorder... ...evolved 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 often got so out of control that he had to be confined in an as...

ABC:LHS #076-1   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. And he was captured by the Nazis in 1942 and spent the war in a German concentration...

ABC:LHS #076   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 guilty.” Fellow guide and cemetery hi...

BBB:LHWS #045   Milton C. Work... ...was a Philadelphia lawyer who took up cards - specifically whist and bridge. 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 development o...

ABC:LHS #075-5   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...