Do You Know These Philadelphians Real Names?

Here’s something different for the blog: a quiz.


Some people are well-known in Philly by assumed names. Here is a mlist of
 birth names. Can you guess who they are?

Answers below.


1 – Carmine Tilelli
2 – Freddy Cocozza
3 – Ernie Evans
4 – William Claude Dunkenfield
5 – Elaine Berlin
6 – Joseph Abraham Gottlieb
7 – Angelo Mirena
8 – Hyman Litsky
9 – Joseph Nigro Jr.
10 – Arnold Cream
11 – Cornelius McGillicuddy
12 – Angelo Annaloro
13 – Robert Louis Ridarelli
14 – Amir Khaib Thompson
15 – Robert Rihmeek Williams



ANSWERS

the answers below are invisible. use your computer's cursor to 'highlight' the invisible text to see it!

1 – boxer Joey Giardello
2 – Mario Lanza
3 – Chubby Checker
4 – W.C. Fields
5 – actress Elaine May
6 – Comedian Joey Bishop
7 – boxing trainer Angelo Dundee
8 – radio DJ Hy Lit
9 – radio DJ Joe Niagara
10 – boxer Jersey Joe Walcott
11 – baseball legend Connie Mack
12 – Mafia Don Angelo Bruno
13 – singer Bobby Rydell
14 – drummer Questlove
15 – rapper Meek Mill

When P.T. Barnum Bought a 161-Year-Old Woman in Philly

When P.T. Barnum heard of the “amazing exhibit” in Philadelphia, he just had to go see it with his own eyes.

The year was 1835 and the “World’s Greatest Showman” was just starting his quest to present the wonders of the world to a credulous public. What he came to Philadelphia to see with his own eyes was a woman named Joice Heth.

She was a slave captured in Africa, and purchased by the father of George Washington. She was the nurse maid of baby George and now she was 161 years old.

Wow, 161 years old! And she looked it. She was toothless, blind, all skin and bone but she was talkative. And she spoke of rocking the cradle of baby George Washington.

Barnum looked at the old crone and saw gold. He bargained down the price of old Joice to $1,000, including an old bill of sale to the Washington family.

She was first displayed to the public in New York City and then the towns and cities of New England. At one point Barnum planted the story that she was not real but an automaton. This created even more interest in the old woman.

About a year later, Joice died. The canny Barnum concocted a way to make money from the corpse.
A doctor in New York would autopsy Joice. Barnum charged spectators 50 cents to watch the autopsy and 1,500 New Yorkers paid to watch.

We don’t know how the doctor knew, but he announced that the old woman could be no more than 80 years old.

The press declared that the public had been duped. For Barnum, it was the start of a fabulous career of freaks and frauds.

The Rootin’ Tootin’ Life of Rodeo Ben (Cowboy Tailor)

Philadelphia's Cowboy Outfitter, Rodeo Ben

He was Philadelphia’s most unlikely celebrity, whose name popped up for six decades in newspapers around the nation.

His given name, Bernard Lichtenstein, rarely appeared in print. But if you search the national newspaper online archive, “Rodeo Ben” appears countless times.

The Polish-born, Jewish tailor was always known as Rodeo Ben, which was also the name of his business.

As a 1941 Miami newspaper article put it: “Strange that the conservative old Quaker City would be the locale for the most famous cowboy tailor in the world. Rodeo Ben has dressed all the big-time cowboy stars and swank dude ranchers.”

Yes, Rodeo Ben said he made western outfits for Gene Autry, Tom Mix, Roy Rodgers, Dale Evans, Hopalong Cassidy and many other Hollywood cowpokes. And in the late 1940s a clothing firm put out a pair of jeans called Wranglers and bragged in advertising that Wranglers were designed by Rodeo Ben.

The idea that a Jewish tailor in Philly produced the best in fancy Western wear intrigue many newspaper writers. Television’s Charles Kuralt spent two days filming Ben.

Once the Joe Palooka comic strip depicted a character entering a store with a Rodeo Ben sign.

A Polish publication did a piece on Rodeo Ben, who left Poland with his parents at age 14 and soon was working behind a sewing machine.

In his early 20s, Lichtenstein became a traveling salesman selling cloth.

Lichtenstein and his son told somewhat similar stories about how he became a cowboy tailor. They say there was a rodeo in our area and a cowgirl was looking for a certain color cloth to sew her own outfit. Lichtenstein produced the rarely-seen color and offered to make the outfit himself. One thing led to another, and sometime in the early 1930s he became Rodeo Ben employing a bunch of tailors and seamstresses churning out western clothes.

He once said business was good, even during the depression.

His first operation was on Colombia Avenue and later moved to Broad Street in Oak Lane. In the new store he sold everything western – boots, hats, saddles, leather jackets with fringes, clothes with rhinestones and sequins.

He was often asked why he didn’t open stores in Texas or other western states. He said he was doing fine in Philly and didn’t need the aggravation of starting a chain. “I have 10,000 measurements on file,” he declared.

He also put out a mail order catalogue.

Lichtenstein died in 1985 at age 90. His son had already closed the iconic Broad Street store in 1983. Today you’ll most likely to find an original Rodeo Ben outfit at an antiques auction

He knows Pornography When he Sees It – Even if it Takes a Magnifying Glass

Nowadays we have an annual nude bike ride where men and women pedal through the streets of Philadelphia mostly buck naked, but it wasn’t always that way.

Consider 1979 – not exactly the Victorian era – and what happened during art shows hung in the lobby of the federal courthouse at 6th and Market Streets.

There were 80 pieces of art hung that January, including 10 that contained some nudity. Afraid that “children, nuns and priest” would be scandalized, Chief Judge Joseph S. Lord ordered the paintings removed. In fact, Lord told a reporter he “detected a theme of lesbianism” in the art.

The local manager of the GSA, which actually oversees the courthouse, said he approved the show calling it “good art” and never felt it would provoke any controversy.

While this dust-up got plenty of local and national news coverage, six months later, Judge Lord’s war on nudity in the courthouse lobby, made even bigger news. This time the American Civil Liberties Union got involved and it took a magnifying glass to see the alleged smut.

A new art show included a six-foot collage of photocopied government documents. It hung for a while before someone spotted a tiny, postage stamp sized piece of the collage that sparked another brouhaha.

Lord examined the piece with a magnifying glass and declared it obscene. He saw what appeared to be a man’s hand on a woman’s hip and some suggestive words.

Lord ordered the collage removed but this time the artist and a gallery owner got an ACLU lawyer to battle for artistic integrity. The GSA had its own lawyer to fight for artistic freedom. Another federal judge ruled the collage could stay.

Judge Lord did win another battle involving a piece entitled “Secret Agent.” We don’t know exactly what the piece portrayed but it was the titled that bugged the judge. He felt it made fun of agents who might be called to testify in the building.

In a way, Judge Lord won all three battles. In the end, the nudes, the collage and “Secret Agent” were all moved from the lobby to the court’s office building where few members of the public could view them.

The Kooky Katzenjammer Kids’ Philly Connection

They were the worst brats in the Sunday funnies and it was a Philadelphia cartoonist who made the Katzenjammer Kids so naughty and hilarious.

Said to be the nation’s longest running comic strip, the devilish duo of Hans and Fritz were born in 1897 and were laid to rest 109 years later in 2006.

Five artists, starting with creator, Rudolph Dirks, drew the two masters of mischief over those decades but the cartoonist often considered the best was Harold Knerr of Philly. Knerr drew the Katzenjammer panel longer than any others – for 35 years from 1914 until his death in 1949.

Born in Bryn Mawr, Knerr was an alumnus of Episcopal Academy and Philadelphia University of the Arts. In the years prior to the Katzenjammers, he drew cartoons for Philly’s three largest newspapers: The Record, Inquirer and Public Ledger.

When Dirks got into a battle with the Hearst news group, Knerr was offered the comic strip and gladly accepted.

Maybe one reason the Kazenjammers are gone is political correctness. The Kids and other characters all spoke with a comical German accent. A fat, bearded character call “der Captain” might say, Vos dot yer read’ink (What is that you are reading.) The word 'just' comes out 'chust' and 'giant' is 'chiant'. Every character in the comic strip spoke mit un hacksent.

The strip was all about Fritz and Hans pulling pranks on the adults. One writer called the pair, “the world’s most durable delinquents.”

The Sunday comic strip was done in pen and ink and the color happened in the printing plant.

The Katzenjammer cast appeared in film cartoons, comic books and a 1995 United States Postage stamp. Original artist drawings of the strip from the early days sell for several hundred dollars.

Dr. S.M. Landis: Fearless Failure At Everything

He was a physician (maybe), a clergyman (of his own denomination). He churned out and published book-after-book. Simon M. Landis also wrote plays and starred in them, while dodging a variety of missiles thrown by the audience.

Mostly, the good doctor is a footnote in Philly history because he wrote a sex manual in 1870 which got him tossed into Moyamensing Prison for obscenity.

The verbose Landis was pardoned by the governor after serving less than five months of a one-year sentence. He immediately published the transcript of his trial and a second book about his thoughts while in prison.

Neither his books, plays nor his obscenity trial are very interesting. Most of the trial transcript is taken up by Landis’ lawyer making windy speeches and a grumpy judge refusing to allow any part of the sex book to be read in court.

Defense attorney John G. Kilgore declared: “The book shows how to generate a new race of men and women that will be beautiful and healthy and pure instead of criminal and diseased persons.” The lawyer said Dr. Landis “has gives us instruction…to produce moral and holy offsprings.”

Apparently, the good doctor had some new sexual positions that produced these healthy, holy kids.

The book warns against “coffee, tea or other artificial beverage that will steam heat, irritate and excite the organs.”

Landis writes about the “magnetic attraction” between ovum and sperm. However, he has a “special demagnetization technique” to avoid conception.

As far as the judge was concerned, the book was pure smut that might fall into the hands of children and the jury agreed.

Landis was the pastor of something called the First Progressive Christian Church. During the trial it emerged that Landis had no church building but rented meeting halls where he packed in 1,000 or more Philadelphians to hear him preach. Some referred to it as “The Love Church.”

At one point he proposed establishing a church in Reading, Pa. The Reading newspaper suggested Allentown as the proper location for Landis since “they still believe in spooks and hobgoblins etc.”

We only know bits and pieces of the life of S.M Landis, M.D. D.D, from a few newspaper clippings. Why he gave up medicine for a life in the theater is never clear.

We have a fascinating front page clipping from 1888 when 1,200 came to see Dr. Landis and his troupe performed a play Landis wrote called, “Dick Shaw.” There was a net in front of the stage to protect Landis from “the howling mob without chivalry or mercy hurled volleys of missiles. . .. eggs, potatoes, oranges, lemons, beans and small baseballs.”

When the audience exhausted their supply of fruits and vegetables, “one of the worst mobs ever gathered within the four walls of a Philadelphia building" smashed the chairs and hurled the pieces at Landis.

There were several cops in the theater to protect the actors, but an enraged Landis shook his fists at the crowd and finally quit the performance.

The article does not explain why Landis was so hated. Interestingly, the news article claims the violent audience was composed mostly of ruffians from “Port Richmond, Manayunk, Southwark and Grays Ferry.”

Landis tried bringing his act to other cities. A New York newspaper critic wrote: “He came to New York last winter after inflicting himself on long-suffering Philadelphia until there was signs of riot and revolt in the air.”

The New York writer goes on to say that Landis “astonished and for a time amused audiences."

But his attempts at Shakespearian tragedy were so terrible that he tried "a burlesque tragedy which seemed to be his strong point.

“In it, he killed everyone in the cast at least once and was himself killed four times. Multitudes would have rushed with fond anticipation and delight to witness the proceedings had one of the four times been real.”

Hall and Oates: ‘A Shotgun Marriage’

The Early Days of Daryl Hall and John Oates

As that famous philosopher Meek Mill once said: “I think everyone in Philadelphia has been shot at.”


Rock giants Hall & Oates would certainly agree with the wisdom of Mr. Mill.
It was gunfire that brought the pair together in 1967.

John Oates and Daryl Hall had never met when they competed in separate groups in a Battle of the Bands contest in the ballroom of the old Adelphia Hotel at 12th and Chestnut.

Suddenly, gunfire broke out in the ballroom between rival gang members.

The two strangers rushed into a service elevator. On the way down there was some talk of music. The two rockers learned they were both Temple University students. The friendship deepened on campus.

According to their Wikipedia page the two eventually shared an off-campus apartment and decided to be known as “Hall & Oates” when they saw the names on their mail box.

Again, Wikipedia says sales of their albums “make them the best selling music duo in history.”

Childless. Without Heirs or Will, 26,000 “Relatives” Claim Her Fortune

A guard at the grave at Laurel Hill Cemetery before exhumation

The death in1930 of Henrietta Schaefer Garrett set off the largest “Gold Rush” in Philadelphia history.  

Another way to describe what happened is “The Super Bowl of Greed.” 

The reclusive, childless, penny-pinching widow left no will but her estate was worth about $7 million when she kicked the bucket. This was a huge pot of cash. One newspaper said she was the third wealthiest woman in America.

Over the next 20 years 26,000 people – in practically every state and 50 foreign countries – claimed kinship to the dearly departed and therefore an heir to the fortune.

Even Hitler’s Germany sent a representative to Philadelphia to make a claim. And the state of Pennsylvania was hoping no heirs existed so it would get the entire estate.

Before it all ended, her estate had increased to about $20 million. 

It sparked a murder suicide in Germany, Garrett’s body was exhumed and fraudsters went to prison.

Henrietta, whose parents came from Germany, had married a very wealthy older gentleman. Walter Garrett owned America’s largest snuff company. The couple settled into a large brownstone house on 9th Street near Spruce.

In 1895 Walter died leaving everything to Henrietta. Although she had a few servants, she hated to spend an extra penny, but apparently listened to a good financial advisor.

When hundreds then thousands of people started claiming to be kinfolk, the court appointed a “special master” to investigate the claims. After 20 years that report may have set a world record for sheer size.

In 1951 the court-appointed master produced 390 thick volumes - millions of pages of testimony and a 900-page summary.

The investigation uncovered three first cousins – all three now dead, but their heirs got part of the $20-million pot. The lion’s share of the money went for court fees, expenditures and taxes.

Even after the settlement. the judge in the case had to hear a few new claims. The most ridiculous came from a West Virginia woman who said a young Henrietta showed up at the family remote cabin with a newborn baby girl. She gave away that baby and she was Henrietta’s daughter!

There were rumors that Henrietta did have a will that an angry servant hid in her casket when she was buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery. The court allowed her disinterment in 1937. There was no will in the casket.

And then there was the murder-suicide. The tale varies a bit, but a man who traveled from Germany to Philly to make a family claim and returned empty-handed got into an argument with his mother (or aunt) over travel expenses. He shot and killed his mother then turned the weapon on himself.

There were even cases of those who forged documents showing kinship to Henrietta, going to prison for forgery and fraud.

The entire mess was the result of greed and a women too cheap to buy new clothes or wire her house for electricity or pay a lawyer to write a will.

Crazy Gary Naturally Buys Stocks In Crazy Eddie

Talk About Crazy!!!

There’s nothing funny about the late and unlamented Gary M. Heidnik who kidnapped six women, chained them in his basement and killed two victims.

But there were unbelieving smiles in the courtroom on the day the prosecution called a representative of Merrill Lynch to the witness stand hoping to prove that “Bishop Heidnik” was not as nutty as he appeared.

In 1975 a man calling himself “Bishop Heidnik” opened an account over the phone for $1,500 in the name of a phony church, said broker Robert Kirkpatrick.

Eight years later that small nest egg had swollen to an amazing balance of $540,000.

Far from being insane, Kirkpatrick’s impression from phone conversations was that Heidnik was “a very astute, rational investor.” He was also proved very astute by starting a “church” in his North Philly “House of Horrors” to avoid taxes.

During his 1988 murder trial, Heidnik had sat stoned-faced until the testimony about his money. Suddenly, he became animated and alert.

Broker Kirkpatrick read a note from Heidnik: “I saw that Tastykake has hit 11 yesterday. I hope we got 2,000 shares.” He placed order for another stock and reminded the broker, “Don’t forget my 35 percent discount.”

In an earlier court case on unpaid alimony, Heidnik moaned and groaned about losing money on Crazy Eddie stock. The electronics chain store owner had been caught in fraud and fled the nation.

“I just couldn’t resist Crazy Eddie,” he told the judge in the alimony case.

By the time of his murder trial, the courts had taken control of his investments but Heidnik was still upset over his Crazy Eddie losses and showed it in court.

Later his defense lawyer Charles Peruto Jr. told reporters, “He’s obsessed with Crazy Eddie.”

Despite having a genius IQ of 148, Heidnik had been in and out of mental institutions, his entire life. Peruto Jr. used an insanity defense and the jury might have agreed that a genius could also be insane. But his action – disposing the two bodies, lying to a cop who came to his house – showed the defendant knew right from wrong.

Crazy, yes but not “legally insane.” The jury found him guilty of murder and other crimes and sentenced him to death. Heidnik was executed on July 6, 1999 after telling lawyers to cease filing appeals.

Cantankerous Collector Barnes

 

You write a nice letter to Dr. Albert Barnes asking to visit his famed art collection and the answer was a sarcastic “No way” form-letter, sometimes “signed” by his dog.

The man certainly qualifies to be called the “most cantankerous, ornery, old coot of 20th century Philadelphia".  His enemies’ list was four-times longer than his list of friends.

He’d bristle at anyone who considered his Merion collection of modern masterpieces a museum. No! It’s an educational institute – a school!

The millionaire collector came from humble blue-collar roots and was at war constantly with Philadelphia’s upper crust establishment, but he had a soft spot for working people and African-Americans.

A prime example was a totally unknown Swarthmore college student who wrote three times asking permission to visit the collection and was ignored. But when the same student wrote a letter to Barnes from Pittsburgh falsely claiming to be an uneducated steel mill worker – permission was granted.

That student became best-selling author, James Michener.
The author wrote a short blurb for the 1987 Barnes’ biography: The Devil and Dr. Barnes.
Michener wrote, in part: “It was good renewing my acquaintance with a rascally old devil who added a sulphurous touch to my coming of age.”

In many ways the millionaire collector was a notorious cheapskate. Those wishing to visit had to include a self-addressed stamped envelope just to get the rejection form.

Barnes once chewed out a long-time trusted secretary for using a three-cent stamp when a two-cent stamp was sufficient.

A good example of Barnes nasty humor was a rejection letter signed by a fictitious aide saying he could not bother Barnes with the man’s request for a visit while the Doctor was trying to break “the world’s record for goldfish swallowing”

After Barnes death in an auto crash in 1951 Merion’s “Holy of Holies” became open to any visitors on Fridays and Saturdays. He left the priceless art collection in the hands of all-black Lincoln University.

There’s no doubt that Barnes would be angered beyond words if he knew the entire collection had been moved to a new building in Philadelphia and was now truly a museum – opened six days a week to anyone with $30

Angelo Lutz's New Family Business

Crook Turned Cook Angelo

One was a jolly, short, fat guy - about 5-foot-5 and 400 pounds.
His pal was a good-looking (women might say cute) skinny chap with a hot temper.
 
Name that pair. 

It’s not Laural and Hardy.
Yes, this odd couple was Angelo “Fat Ange” Lutz and “Skinny” Joey Merlino.

When last reported Merlino was in New York copping a plea for running an illegal gambling operation and getting into hot water for parole violations.

But the fat guy took a different path after serving a seven year term in federal prison for gambling and extortion. Fat Ange has parleyed his Mafia notoriety into a successful restaurant in Collingswood, N.J.

The Kitchen Consigliere might be the only “Mafia themed” restaurant anywhere. 

Lutz always insisted he was “a cook not a crook.” Unlike his skinny pal, Lutz was not a made member of the local Cosa Nostra. But the FBI had plenty of tapes of Ange running a gambling operation for the mob.

Before his incarceration in 2002, rotund Angelo sought media publicity by sharing his recipes, such as a Merlino favorite, Lutz called “pork chops Joey.” Another original recipe was Chicken Angelo.

Lutz once entered Philadelphia’s infamous Wing Bowl eating contest. He gobbled down a mere 75 chicken wings in 30 minutes while the winner consumed 150 wings.

Lutz portrayed a jolly Saint Nick at Merlino’s Christmas parties for homeless families.

He was memorable in a Mummers parade where his bare upper body was painted a gold color making him a perfect “Golden Buddha.”

Lutz opened his Collingswood restaurant in 2008 and it was an instant success – packed every night. Who doesn’t want to rub elbows with a “real” Mafia gangster? Especially, if the gangster is a talkative roly-poly guy who jokes with customers, hugs the ladies and sits down at your table for a glass of wine.

His restaurant has a big wall mural showing Ange with a bunch of fictitious Mafioso such as Don Corleone and Tony Soprano. Light scones in Lutz’ restaurant look like pistols.

Fat Ange provides a lesson for any notorious gangsters who want to go straight:
Start a business such as tavern or restaurant. Be available to meet and greet customers. They will jam the place for the “thrill” of being with a once- dangerous wise guy.

As Fat Ange explained in an interview: “They (customers) come for me.”

Rufus Harley Brought The Highlands To Philly

The Lovingly Eccentric Rufus

When one considers Philadelphia eccentrics there is a rich field to choose from, but let us start here with the late Rufus Harley, the world’s first (and we believe only) jazz bagpipe player.

In fact, Rufus might have been the first and only African-American bagpiper in any musical genre. This unique job-description – black, jazz bagpiper –got Rufus on a bunch of TV shows from “What’s My Line” to Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”

However, the man was uniquely, weird in many other ways, too. Get him talking (which wasn’t difficult) and soon your head was swimming.

The man had his own odd philosophy of life – bits and piece of world religions, numerology, cosmic vibration.

He liked to deliver babies (within his extended family) and present miniature replicas of the Liberty Bell to scores of people, ranging from the Pope and U.S. Presidents, to Nelson Mandela and Bozo the Clown.

The contents of his modest Germantown rowhouse might provide some feel for this unique oddball: burning candles, cattle horns, voodoo statues, Zodiac signs, a Russian icon, a statue of Buddha, pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Frank Rizzo and much, much more.

Painted on the walls were various numbers and symbols . Several simply read “ME.” Ask about “ME” and you would learn that ME is the third note in the scale – do, re, me. Earth is the third planet from the sun. You can hear that word three in freedom.

Rufus wrote something called the Consti-three-ion, which he gave out with his miniature Liberty Bells.

As wacky as all this sounds, Rufus was also a very likeable and pleasant guy. And he was a really good musician on many instruments, particularly sax.

He showed musical talent and a unique personality as a child.. “I was always an eccentric, difficult kid,” he told a reporter in a 1990 interview. “When I was nine years old my mother took me to a psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital. He tested me all day. He said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with your kid.’”

He was an optimist, a vegetarian, a life-long Philadelphia booster who played bagpipes at weddings, bar mitzvahs and many jazz festivals. He died in 2006 - a loss to all those who love genuine eccentricity.

Hoarder Of History Christian Sanderson

If you have never been to the Christian Sanderson House Museum in Chadds Ford, GO!

We guarantee you will smile. Maybe chuckle and you will certainly be amazed by the man—a man we nominate as the Delaware Valley’s all-time, premier hoarder/ collector.

Born in 1882, Sanderson died at age 84 in 1966 amid huge piles of stuff he had been saving since he was a child. However, Sanderson was more than a nutty pack rat. He was a beloved neighbor, school teacher, radio personality for four decades, musician, historian and popular lecturer.

Among Sanderson’ neighbors were artists N.C. and Andrew Wyeth. He was the subject of several Wyeth paintings. The Wyeths also gave him paintings, prints, drawing and every year a Wyeth-made Christmas card.

He saved goofy stuff from his own life and real treasurers. 
There is a matchstick used to light birthday candles, painted Easter eggs starting from 1886, his baby highchair from 1882, the handles from a suitcase he took to college in 1898.

Yes, he even saved the class rosters from the country schools where he taught and notes from parents: “please excuse Mary on account of planting potatoes.”

He saved the pencil he used to vote for Alf Langdon for president n 1936.

Crazy stuff like a piece of paper where Sanderson wrote: “Written with my Waterman pen on May 6, 1935, the day Frank Waterman, company president died”

But he collected all sorts of real historical artifacts: 
A piece of a bullet-shattered fence from the Battle of Gettysburg, the purse of the only woman killed at Gettysburg. Posters and photos by the thousands: reward poster for the missing Lindbergh baby, election poster from 1882 for Benjamin Harrison.

He collected weapons galore from ever war starting with the Revolution, cannon balls, arrowheads, musical instruments, a rock from Iwo Jima, a piece of Fort Ticonderoga, a small part from the airplane that crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945 and a small part from Lindbergh’s famous Spirit of St Louis airplane.

Sanderson started organizing his collection in only two of the many small rooms in his house. His friends saved the house and organized the collection. It would consume endless hours to see everything.

Betsy Ross and Vexil Domus Weisgerber

What are the weirdest names in Philly?

Well, there is a writer named Mister Mann Frisby.

An 18th century city official was Israel Israel – and he wasn’t even Jewish.

We might add current Philly’s pitcher, Seranthony Dominquez, 1940s boxer Young Gene Buffalo and long-gone basketball player, Mockie Bunin.

However, we suggest that the strangest Philly name belonged to the late Vexil Domus Weisgerber. 

The name is Latin and means “flag house.” The man was born and raised in the Betsy Ross house on Arch Street. His daddy, Charles H. Weisgerber, was an artist and live-in supervisor of the Betsy
Ross house from 1898 until his death in 1932.

Little Vexil was born in 1902 and had a close association with the Betsy Ross House during most of his life. He was curator of the museum house when he died in 1959. His father brought national attention to the decaying house when he painted a very large picture of Betsy meeting with George Washington, Robert Morris and George Ross.

To raise cash for the house, the picture was reprinted on certificates purchased for a dime by tens of thousands of school kids.

Vexil Weisgerber said the neighborhood kids called him “Flaghouse” some called him Vex. In truth, his first name, like his father’s, was Charles. Apparently, no one ever called him Charles and he got to like “Vexil.”

Everything about Betsy Ross is the source of endless debate: the flag, the house, her grave, a visit by George Washington etc. We will examine some of these controversies in later posts.

However since the topic here is names, Betsy was married three times. 
So her full name is Elizabeth, Griscum, Ross, Ashburn, Claypoole.

A Cracking Good Tale of Two Sisters

Spiritual Trendsetters Maggie and Kate

This is a tale of twenty talented toes. 

They were located on the pretty feet of sisters Maggie and Kate Fox.

In truth, the ladies also had talented ankles and knees.

In the late 1800s the Fox girls started a cult that was bigger than the Rev. Moon, Father Devine and the Bagwan Rajneeshi cults combined.

It was Spiritualism and it enabled the gullible to communicate with the spirits of the dead through séances. The two sisters hailed from a tiny village near Rochester, N.Y.

As youngsters, the Fox girls fooled their parents and neighbors into believing their house was haunted by a spirit that they could summons up. The spirit made rapping sounds .

Soon the Fox girls were communicating with the Spirit World in auditoriums and houses of famous people here and in England. Leah, a third sister, became their manager.

Other mediums got into the act, too. Some said ghostly figures appeared in their photographs. Others could make the dead write on slates or make objects move about a room.

A few figured out the girls’ gimmick. Late in life, the Fox sisters admitted the noise – often quite loud – came from cracking the joints in their toes, ankles and knees.

So where is the Philly connection? Well, Maggie married one of Philadelphia’s most famous 19th century residents, Arctic explorer Elijah Kent Kane.

More important was a multi-year study (1884-87) of Spiritualism, in all its manifestations, by scholars from the University of Pennsylvania.

Henry Seybert was a true believer in Spiritualism, but he must have had a few vague doubts because he left money in his will for a thorough study by Penn scholars. The 10-member Seybert Commission was composed of top intellects, including scientist Joseph Leidy, neurologist,S. Weir Mitchell and Shakespeare expert Horace Furness.

In brief, the Seybert Commission concluded that all forms of Spiritualism were pure bunk. A load of hooey.

Of course, even a 1000 Seybert Commissions cannot stop the gullible from a belief in ghosts and mystics with the power to contact the dearly departed. Examples include Uri Geller, the booming success of ghost tours in every city, and scary urban legends.

Studies in 2017 show close to half Americans either strongly believe in ghosts or they’re not sure about their existence. Search on line for Spiritualists or “contacting the dead” and you will find that this malarkey flourishes.

“Your love one is in a beautiful world of light. They are safe and happy. So do not fear them,” declares one site by a husband-wife team of mediums. There’s similar stuff on Youtube and something called “Afterlife TV.”

Artist Isaiah Zagar Remembers: A Crime of Real Passion on South Street

Over the decades, a lot of weird things have happened on South Street. But the story artist Isaiah Zagar tells sounds like something a short story writer would invent.

Zagar and his wife, Julia, were among the starving artists that brought South street back to life in the late 1960s and 1970s.

“It was in the late ‘60s,” Zagar says. “There was a bread baker – he had learned baking in prison – on South between 3rd and 4th street".

“Living above the baker in the second floor apartment was a young woman – an artist and designer,” says Zagar.

Zagar says her apartment was invaded in the pre-dawn hours by a burglar who came through a window. His entrance woke the woman.

Here’s where the story gets hard to believe. Instead of robbing the woman, the two made passionate love. In fact, it was the first act in an affair that Zagar claims lasted about two years.

“He hung around until the baby was born,” says Zagar. Yes the cat burglar and the artist produced a love child.

Well, that’s Zagar’s story and the creator of the wonderfully creative South Street Magic Garden sticks by it.

Philadelphia Film Legend Stages Silent Train Crash

The year was 1914 and Philadelphia-based movie mogul Siegmund “Pop” Lubin was about to stage his most spectacular, most costly scene ever.

It would show how far he had come since his primitive efforts when moving pictures were brand new in 1895.

Lubin’s first films lasted a few minutes. One featured a horse eating hay. Then there were his little daughters dancing. Another had the Lubin kids having a pillow fight.

Once in the early days he gathered some friends and strangers on the roof of a Center City building. They pretended to cheer while two guys pretended to re-enacted a recent boxing match. It could have the worse boxing movie ever filmed.

The years had passed. Lubin’s silent films had gotten longer and better. He hired real actors, real directors, opened a studio in North Philly and real big studio called Betzwoood in Montgomery County where real western cowboys were imported to gallop on real horses.

By 1914 he had settled lawsuits brought by Thomas Edison. And now he was spending $25,000 (or so he said) on a single scene. He had purchased two old train locomotives and several old passenger cars. The plan was to have the locomotives going full-speed on the same tracks and crash into each other.

The scene was staged on tracks in Central Pennsylvania. An enormous crowd had gathered at a safe distance to witness the thunderous crash.

It was graphically described by a reporter for the Altoona newspaper:
“With whistles shrieking, throttles wide open and steaming hissing from noisy cylinders, two locomotives hauling trains on the tracks of the Pittsburgh and Susquehanna Railroad rushed to a point where they met in a terrific head-on collision before the eyes of thousands of spectators . . .”

It was a spectacular crash, indeed. Lubin positioned cameras at every angle to insure the scene was captured. In fact, the two huge locomotives seemed to rear up into the air before falling on their sides. All the empty cars were smashed.

Lubin used the head-on smash-up in at least five films, perhaps a dozen.

No one was inside the train cars but actors in swaying railroad cars pretended to be victims of the mighty crash.

Lubin might have shot 1,000 films but only a few survived. Several are in the National Archives. Under the on-line site “Betzwood Movie Archive” you can watch a handful of Lubin films, including "A Partner To Providence", which includes the thunderous but silent locomotive collision scene.

WATCH THE FILM!

Marriage Through Thick and Thin: Philadelphia Circus History

John and Hannah Battersby were irrefutable proof that opposites do attract.

They met in the circus where 600-pound Hannah worked as the Fat Lady and John was billed as the “Living Skeleton.” He weighed in at about 50 to 60 pounds.

Apparently, their marriage was not a circus publicity stunt because they stayed married and settled in Frankford. Retired, thin man John started eating and ballooned up to 130 pounds. He quit the sideshow business totally and became a carriage builder.

The couple probably settled in Frankford to be among fellow carnival and circus people. In the 19th century Frankford was the home of the John “Porgy” O’Brien Circus, which was later taken over by the larger Adam Forepaugh Circus.

A whole bunch of acrobats, clowns and lion tamers lived and worked in Frankford. 

According to a small booklet by the Frankford Historical Society, the pair lived in a house at Unity and Waln streets. The researchers found a newspaper clipping from the 1870s declaring that Hannah became ill “while presiding at a fat ladies convention in Providence, Rhode Island”

She died in 1889 and is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery. Twelve man carried her casket where “a derrick” lowered it into the grave.

One account claims that the Battersbys adopted a carnival sideshow girl from Africa billed as ‘The Cannibal Girl” but also famed for having webbed fingers. A brief New York Times item noted the girl, whose name was Zanie Zanobia, died in 1886 at age 19 in Frankford at the Battersby residence. According to the Find A Grave site she is also buried in Cedar Hill.