I was just looking for information for my cousin Barbara on an ancestor of ours named Barbe, when I noticed that Barbe (d. 1736) was married to Jean-Gerard (d. 1731) (who was "maire" - mayor).  How could I have forgotten that I had a Gerard in my ancestry when Gerard Stiles is one of my favorite DS characters?  And their daughter was named Catherine - I have Catherines coming out of my ears!  (If there was anyone named Marie on DS, I've got tons of those, too ...)

The other name I remembered is Nicholas.  My great-great-great-grandfather in my direct line was named Jean-Nicolas (6 Dec 1765  - 10 Dec 1811).  Since Nicholas Blair is about my least favorite major character on DS, I can see why I hadn't remembered this name earlier.

Yikes, this is getting scary, I just remembered that I also had an ancestor named Adam (whose daughter was named Catherine), and the sister of a different ancestor was named Anne-Eve.  This was in the late 1600s.  And the father of the Jean-Gerard I mentioned above was also named Nicolas (1643-1693).

BTW, I really enjoyed the humorous associations people had in this thread.

I don't have any New England names in my ancestry, but my earliest recorded ancestors in my direct patriarchal line are also names mentioned on DS:  Philippe and Catherine (they lived in the Duchy of Lorraine in the 1600s).  I only recently realized that these are also the names of the two main characters in the movie "Eye of the Devil," a happy coincidence since this movie struck such a chord with me, but then these names are quite common in France.  (What becomes more surprising is that I also have an ancestor named Odile, though she didn't have a brother named Christian - Odile was not an uncommon name in NE France.)  I've searched hard for an Angelique and did find a cousin of some ancestors by that name, so while she could be said to be in an extended family tree, she isn't my ancestor, disappointingly.  The name Angelique isn't quite as rare as I had originally thought since I came across it a number of times in 17th century records.  Other ancestor's names that are also on DS include:  Elisabeth (minor spelling variation), Claude (my oldest recorded ancestor on the maternal side of this line), and Gabriel.

Lately I've switched to my Nordic ancestry, but the names here are quite different for the most part, not likely to be found among any DS characters, though I have found a very early Catherine, in Sƒ¸nderjylland.  There was a Carl later in the 1700s, though as a military man he probably was not much like Carl Collins (on of my favorite John Karlen portrayals).  And a Scandinavian great-grandmother of mine Americanized her name to Carrie in the 1800s (as in the 1840 storyline's "Tad and Carrie").

After writing this, I started consulting a list of DS characters and realize my list is paltry in terms of percentage of hits ... no Jebez, Judah, Gerard, Bramwell or Ezras, no Minerva, Charity, or Dorcas.  What great names the DS writers came up with - and all of them historically accurate for the time periods, as far as I can tell.  I have no surnames in common - no Stokes or Collins or Braithwaites or Hawkes in my family ... I suppose I could add first names of current relatives:  Victoria, Sarah, David, etc.  But no Maggie, Carolyn, Cassandra - except, as I type that, I remember that my sister's name is "Sandra" and that when we were kids growing up watching DS, I really wished she could change it to "Cassandra" because of Cassandra Blair, and I was thrilled when my mother said that Sandra was a form of "Cassandra."  At the time, I would have said both my sister and Cassandra were about equally evil ...  My sister goes by "Sandy" today, which was the name of Victoria Winters' roommate at the foundling home 

I remember your referring to "Berkeley Square," Gothick, and I was intrigued enough by your comment to look into it.  You're right that the film is not available in any format, more's the pity.  Nor was it in the film archive where I was working either, though there was a photo file for it so I was lucky to see photo stills, and I found photos from the Broadway production, too (also with Leslie Howard).  The movie was later remade as "I'll Never Forget You," also known as "The House in the Square," also not available in any format.  Not sure if you've read the play, but it is available either from Dramatists Play Service or Samuel French, I forget which (both have websites).  The 1795 DS storyline does share some general ideas with the play, though I'm not sure how direct an influence it would have been.  As I recall, a young aristocratic man is obsessed with the past and with his ancestry, is transported to the 18th century, where he replaces his own ancestor living at that time.  He falls in love with the sister of the woman he is supposed to marry, as I recall, and is disillusioned by the crudity and cruelty of the era and returns to his own time; the final scene indicates that he never forgot his love there.  John Balderston, the play's author, based the story on an unfinished late work of Henry James, which I have looked at and can't comment on other than that the prose is nearly impenetrable as James' later prose became, and James only wrote up to the point where his protagonist goes back into the past.  It would be interested to speculate that Henry James was the influence behind the 1795 storyline!  In turn, I wonder where James would have come up with this idea of time travel, which isn't the sort of topic one normally associates with him.  Knowing that James was an admirer and friend of H.G. Wells makes me wonder if he was influenced by something Wells might have written on time travel.

Interesting that H.P. Lovecraft was a fan of the movie.  I've read three or four early Lovecraft stories now after first learning of him on this forum a few years ago.  I know you've written about Lovecraft's influence on the Leviathan storyline, but don't recall which works that might have been.  Would also be curious whether Lovecraft's affection for "Berkeley Square" influenced anything he wrote ... but I'm getting off-topic ...

-Vlad

Thanks for posting a link to the story "The Love Letter," D Friedlander.  I spent a lot of time trying to track it down a while back and never did find it on the Internet.  The story was originally published in "The Saturday Evening Post," August 1, 1959.  The magazine reprinted it in 1988.  It would be interesting to know when Dan Curtis first read it.

I remember that scene; she made Mrs. Johnson's struggle not to tell the dream very real.  Clarice Blackburn showed an impressive range in the depictions of the characters she played.  Remember how unlikeable Mrs. Johnson was at first?  Her performance as Abigail Collins was first rate - she was so unlikeable that one felt she deserved what she got when she went into the basement - yet in that final moment you could finally sense her humanity.

She was also superb as Mrs. Johnson in the 1995 sequence ...

Perhaps her most nuanced performance was as Mrs. Trask.  Not especially likeable, but still you didn't feel she deserved her fate - there was a glimmer of humanity in Mrs. Trask that was utterly lacking in the "Rev." Trask.

It's great you were able to locate your family's origins, Arashi!  There are many French-Canadian names in my hometown, including Pellerin!  (I only have a portion of French descent, but it's my direct line; my family members didn't come by way of Canada but directly from Lorraine in 1872.)  I'll message you on what I found on the origin of your name.

as far as last names go they use angelique's(bouchard)so infrequently that it's easy to forget that she ever had one.i don't remember anyone ever directly calling her by that name and certainly not "miss bouchard".was it common for household servants to be refered to only by thier first name in the eighteenth century?

If books and movies are to be trusted, servants were often called by their first names.  This is getting my mind working again on Angelique's origins, but that could be the subject for another thread.

Wonder why the change in names from Josette LaFreniere to Josette Dupres (easier pronunication?).  And actually, I guess the name I found wasn't Dupres but Dupre.  Pronunciation would be the same so I think one is probably a variant of the other.

Interesting, I didn't remember that Josette was given a different surname before either Collins or DuPres.  Since I've been researching French names in my own ancestry recently, I looked up Lafreniƒ¨re, and it might best be translated as "Ashwood."  A rather pretty yet melancholy name, at least with the English connotation of "ash."

The only other French surname I recall being mentioned on the show is Cordier, which means a rope maker.  The name is most usually found in the north and NE of France, where my own ancestors lived.  (I found the record of a sale made by one of my great grandmothers in the early 1600s of a hemp field - hemp being the source of rope, of course.)

Also, in the area where my ancestors lived, the surname COLLIN is found.  The name is a diminutive of the first name "Nicolas," which was one of the most frequent men's names used in this region.  Collins is the English equivalent, but I haven't looked into the etymology of English surnames so I don't know if there is a connection between the French name COLLIN and the English name Collins.

-Vlad

Where he hides out after being found out as a vampire in 1897 is a different story.   The cave is clearly big pieces of dark crumpled-up paper stuck onto the walls.   Yet, even this cheapest of all sets works if you don't stop to think about it.

I never figured out that those cave walls were paper. That must have been the same as the walls in the abandoned mill, too.  Another nagging question solved!

I believe that where Barnabas hid out earlier in the storyline was referred to as a rectory, which is the same as a parsonage, vicarage, or manse - I guess it depends on the denomination, but a rectory seems to usually refer to the Anglican Church in England, so possibly this was an Episcopal Church (the equivalent of the Anglican Church in North America) in Collinsport.  I wonder if that was the denomination of the Collins family back in 1795?