Halloween Serendipity

It's Halloween time!  I've been seeing references to one of my all time favorite actors and human beings, Vincent Price!  I grew up, albeit, with a not so normal obsession with old horror movies and Edgar Allan Poe. Specifically anything Vincent Price did. He also had a love for Poe. So, like I always do, I decided to look up Mr. Price's family tree.

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr is the direct descendant of Rebecca Nurse of Salem, one of the women accused of witchcraft who lost her life to the hysteria of the time.  Rebecca Towne Nurse was Vincent's 7th great grandmother!  I wonder if he actually knew that!  This is through his grandfather Vincent Clarence Price, who was the inventor of Dr. Price's Baking Powder, wife's line, Harriet Elizabeth White.

Here's the line:  Vincent Leonard Price, Jr., Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., Vincent Clarence Price who married Harriet Elizabeth White
Harriet Elizabeth White, daughter of Russell Jesse White, Aaron White, Jr. who married Mary Bigelow
Mary Bigelow, daughter of Thomas Bigelow, Jedidiah Bigelow who married Thomasine Nurse
Thomasine Nurse, daughter of Benjamin Nurse, Jr., Benjamin Nurse, Sr. who's father Francis Nurse married Rebecca Towne (Rebecca Nurse accused Salem witch, 71 years of age, hanged on July 19, 1692).  Rebecca was a central character in Arthur Miller's Crucible.

I have to believe Vincent Price didn't know of this, but of course, I can't be sure.  Oh, how serendipitous!

“The Sheriff brought the witch up the broad aisle, her chains clanking as she stepped.” illustration of Rebecca Nurse by Freeland A. Carter published in “The Witch of Salem, or Credulity Run Mad” by John R. Musick circa 1893.

19th Annual Conference

Very excited to be attending next weekend's annual conference by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

http://glc.yale.edu/events/conferences/19th-annual-conference