Episodes

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne are joined by special guest Laurilea McDaniel to discuss three exceptional women who helped tame the wild west. All three were married to men whose names are well-known to history: Davy Crockett, Kit Carson and Horace Tabor; but we only hear the names of their wives in passing... until now. As Dolly Parton once said, “Storms make trees take deeper roots.” Elizabe...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by David Moffat, a Visitor Services Specialist & researcher at The House of the Seven Gables. David has done a lot of research into the life and work of Caroline Emmerton, the woman who saved the House of the Seven Gables by turning it into the museum we know today and using the funds from that museum to create a settlement house for thousands of immigrants who came t...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Happy St. Patrick's Day! In this episode Dianne and Jennie explore the traditions and customs that have made Irish wakes world famous. Why must a dead body not be left unattended until the funeral? Why would Irish families hire professional mourners? And what in the world is a sin eater? Come along as we celebrate the Ordinary Extraordinary Irish in their customs of life and death. As the Irish s...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne continue their discussion with Sharon Pajka, PhD about the 44 ordinary extraordinary women writers covered in her book 'Women Writers Buried in Virginia'. In this episode we are introduced to Ella Howard Bryan who wrote westerns under the nom de plume Clinton Dangerfield and formed a friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt. We also hear about Amélie Louise Rives Chanler Tro...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne welcome writer and professor of English Sharon Pajka, PhD back to the show to discuss her latest book, "Women Writers Buried in Virginia". What started out as a summer visit to the grave of acclaimed Gothic horror writer VC Andrews, soon became a trek across Virginia to visit the graves and share the stories of 44 Ordinary Extraordinary women writers whose final resting places a...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne visit the gravesite of Bill Pickett a black man who was born just after the American Civil War. He spent his early life working as a ranch hand, but in his adult life he performed in wild west shows around the world! He wowed audiences with his steer wrestling skills and later became Hollywood's first black cowboy hero. This ordinary extraordinary man would be the first black co...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne visit the gravesites of two heros of the American west, Bose Ikard and Nat Love. Both men were born into slavery, but became cowboys after the end of the American Civil War. They faced the dangers of cattle drives and life on the frontier proving themselves to be the best of the best. They were both highly trusted and respected. Their Ordinary Extraordinary lives were full of ad...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne visit the gravesites of three couples who were truly in love in life and are buried side by side in death. The first is a story of young love that had barely started when it was nearly lost during the American Civil War. Second, is the true love story that sank below the seas with the RMS Titanic. Finally, a wild west madam who had many lovers throughout her life...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by Martin Begnal, president of the Friends of Riverside Cemetery in Waterbury, Connecticut. Martin shares the stories of several Riverside residents as well as his own very special familial connection that dates back almost to the beginning of the cemetery. Join us for the Ordinary Extraordinary stories of Carrie Welton, a pioneer woman who lived and died by her own r...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by special guest Casper Johnson as they revisit one of Diane's favorite cemeteries, Greenwood Cemetery in Cañon City, Colorado. They will begin with a brief history of the cemetery and then continue with the tragic story of Joe Arridy, a gentle man with an intellectual disability who was wrongly convicted and executed for a crime he never could have even begun to comm...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Alvin “Creepy” Karpis once said, “Of all the midwest cities the one I knew best was St. Paul and it was a crook’s haven." In this episode Jennie and Dianne visit the mausoleum of Police Chief John J. O'Connor in Calvary Cemetery in St. Paul, Minnesota. They delve into O'Connor's plan to fight "organized crime with organized intelligence", and how this led to creating a sort of gangsters' paradise...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne interview their first guest of the new year! Dr. Thomas Edge is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Bowling Green State University. Tom recently took a sabbatical to research looking at the history of lynching in a different way: specifically the care given to the deceased and the efforts to remember them. His studies took him to 11 different U...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne delve into the beauty and stories of Lincoln, Nebraska's Wyuka Cemetery; a cemetery with the distinction of being the only state appointed cemetery in the United States. Follow along with them as they explore the flora and fauna, the statuary, and the many unique monuments of this 140 acre park cemetery. They also share the ordinary extraordinary stories of a tragic train accide...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Drifter and Gypsie of the Rebel at Large Adventure podcast join Jennie and her son Charlie and husband Dave in an abridged retelling of Charles Dickens's beloved short story A Christmas Carol. What does this have to do with cemeteries? There is an Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery at the end of the story that truly does help Ebenezer Scrooge to learn the true meaning of Christmas. From our families...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne visit the Land of Enchantment, specifically Mount Calvary Cemetery in Albuquerque, New Mexico where every Christmas Eve the cemetery is full of of candlelit luminarias. What are luminarias and how did this tradition start? Find out in this episode of the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery. We also give a quick news update on the Wreaths across America events around the United State...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie explore one of the world's largest Gothic cathedrals, Winchester Cathedral in Winchester, England. This cathedral is the final resting place to kings, bishops, and many other famous persons including legendary English author Jane Austen. They also discuss how Christmas was an important holiday to Jane in her personal life and how it even played a role in many of her novels. Join...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne sit down with BloomBridge founder Kristen Allen for an update on how the flower delivery service has been going since it launched in spring of 2021. This is a follow-up to episode number 28 when we met Kristen for the first time. BloomBridge believes there is something to be said for remembering your loved ones. Honoring someone after they pass is about respect and loyalty. Flow...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. November is National Native American Heritage Month so in this episode Jennie and Dianne learn about the death and burial traditions of the Ordinary Extraordinary Hopi, Navajo and Apache nations of the American Southwest. They end the episode by sharing the Hopi story of The Land of the Dead. - "The young man said, "I did not believe that there was such a place as this. I thought, 'When a man die...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne chat with fellow taphophile and podcast host Hugh Yeman about his extraordinary leap down the rabbit hole that led to his discovery of one of America's most prolific abolitionists Moses Summers. Not only was Moses a newspaper man who wrote extensively about his abolitionist ideals, but he also served in the American Civil War writing home to the North about life on the warfront ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne pay homage to America's military veterans as they explore America's Cemetery and the Avenue of Flags in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. Formerly known as Hillcrest Memorial Park, America's Cemetery honors veterans who have served in every American conflict since World War I. The avenue of flags was established in order to recognize the hostages during the Iranian Hostag...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie take an Autumn stroll through beautiful Elm Grove Cemetery in Mystic, Connecticut. They explore the history of its unique shape, its gorgeous stone arch entrance, and learn about some of the people whose stories are buried off the banks of the Mystic River in this Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery. Resources for this episode include: Kulbida, Lydia. "Behind the Gates: The true s...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Join Jennie and Dianne for this very special Halloween edition of the ordinary extraordinary cemetery podcast. Grab your favorite warm beverage, turn the lights down low, and curl up with a cozy blanket as we wander through the cemetery to meet some of Edgar Allan Poe's most scrupulous characters. The five stories shared in this episode are performed by phenomenally talented actors who performed ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dianne and Jennie sit down with special guest Shelley Dziedzic to discuss Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts where the infamous Lizzie Borden and her family are buried. They briefly discuss the grizzly murder of Andrew and Abby Borden, how their autopsies were conducted in the cemetery, and the importance of remembering the victims and not just those accused of their murders. They al...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne are joined by Andy Harpole and Savannah Darr of the Friends of Eastern Cemetery and by fellow podcaster Liz Clappin of the "Tomb with a View" podcast to discuss the story of Eastern Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky and how its friend's group is helping it to survive. This episode was inspired by the documentary "Facing East", which was released in 2020 by Ronin N...