I think Anthony George chose to leave DS while playing Jeremiah Collins.  They probably at the time were temporarily writing Burke out of the picture because they didn't know what to do with him anymore.

Had AG stayed, it would have been nice to see Burke return in the midst of the Cassandra/Nicholas/Adam story and how Burke would interacted with them.

Liz and Roger's mother was mentioned twice on DS, though never by name.

The first time is when Liz is going to marry Jason and she shows Vicky a family heirloom her mother gave her.

The second time is during the summer of 1970 when Liz needs to know the hour of the day she was born.  She mentions to someone that her father was away when she was born and her mother wrote to him the details about her birth.

Part of the problem w/1795 is the divergence the writers took from established history by necessity. Originally, the timeline for the deaths of Josette, Naomi and Barnabas were to have taken place in the 1820's. We can only speculate why these events were pushed back to 1795 (the availability of period costumes, for instance). Nor was Jeremiah, the central ancestral figure, supposed to have died during these events - he and Josette were supposed to be Elizabeth's and Roger's great grandparents. Collinwood wasn't supposed to have been built until 1830. Jeremiah was supposed to be in the same age group as his brother Joshua, not the same age as Barnabas.

The decision to kill off Jeremiah was probably dictated by Anthony George's desire to leave the show and had perhaps the biggest impact on changing the established history. I would have preferred to see the part recast, thus salvaging an important historical plot point.

While 1795 is my favorite story line I'm not blind to its faults. The pacing is decidely off, again perhaps necessitated by Anthony George's unexpected departure. I feel it should have culminated in Josette's death (and may have been originally intended so); instead she's killed off about half way through and the whole Nathan/Millicent storyline seems like a lot of tack-on at the end rather than being interwoven with the rest of the period.

I think what makes it my favorite, aside from the time travel element, is that it represents a time when the actors were given challenging roles to play and acted the heck out of it, and it was during a time when the writing was still sharp and the dialogue still interesting and creative.

I too wondered why they simply didn't recast Jeremiah with another actor as they already did that with three characters one month before.  It would have been better off that way.  Looks to me like a hasty decision by DC that would become the norm in later years (ex. Carl Collins should have just been written out of 1897 by leaving town as Andre was in 1795)

1795 though, is a great, tightly plotted story that they had a beginning, middle, and end for and it was written better then 1897 was.  1840 is also close to 1795 but not as much in terms of plotting.

For me, 1897 dragged out way too long during the last two months.  It should have ended once Barnabas completed his mission there.  The whole I Ching tries by Petofi were too long for me.

Roger Davis in a second role was another negative factor for me.

1795 seemed to have a plan ,while 1897 seemed to divert from the original plan and the writers went day by day instead.

[spoiler]Hanscombe the butler was also the man whom Roger ran down and killed in 1956 and blamed Burke for.[/spoiler]

In 1984, When Robert Gerringher was on The Edge of Night (the same time Joel Crothers was on) he try to woo the character Lois Kibbee played.

Lois Kibbee also co-authored a book with Joan Bennett.

About one week prior to the start of 1795, Julia tells Elizabeth that she will be leaving Collinwood in about one week, her work almost done.

Does anyone know if they were planning to write her off the show or just have her live elsewhere?

With 1795 coming up, it seemed they were trying to tie up the loose end of her still living at Collinwood once the show returned from 1795, and they apparently forgot all about it when 1795 ended.

David Ford played a character on "Search for Tomorrow" from 1972-1973 named Karl Devlin, who slowly went insane.

I remember DF (in retrospect) as the announcer in a commercial for Time Magazine back in the 70's.  Even now I can hear his voice in that commercial.