Peter ¹ Peter ² Pumpkin Eaters and the Vampire Slayers...

Well, sort of...there are no pumpkins in the tale...

(Author's note: Sometimes these ancestral discoveries are just so incredible they defy imagination. It's all a part of the journey of how we got from there to here - and all a part of the journey as to how it was revealed. This is a crazy tale. Hang on to your teeth!)

As always, unapologetically, unedited. 

I didn't expect this.

I didn't expect to see the name Peter Lurvey, or the City of Archangel, Russia, or the word "Jewish," all rumored to be connected to my family. I mean, who's ever frickn' heard of The White Sea? Why were the great algorithms and Boston scholars alluding, if not saying, that I had ancestors from this place - The White Sea? Did white privilege originate here? LOL. 

                   

And I certainly didn't expect to see the word "Vampire" linked to my ancestor Peter Lurvey's descendants. But hey, there it was.

  Above: William Monroe Newton, History of Barnard, Vermont: With Family Genealogies, 1761-1927, vol. 2 (Montpelier, VT: Vermont Historical Society, 1928), 278                 

Above: Peter Lurvey, "The Peter 2 Lurvey Family of Essex County, Mass., Maine, and Vermont," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 155 (2001)
 

It's not that I hadn't seen Peter's name before. He's an immigrant ancestor on my mother's side—an eighth great-grandfather, a minor figure in our sprawling family tree. Frankly, I'd barely paid him any attention. I'd seen his "associations" with a few of the less notable and less notorious "witches" of the late seventeenth century, too. But honestly, I thought his story was kind of boring. Peter Lurvey seemed like your average ancestor with an average entourage. Snore, right?                         

 Above and below: My mother's pedigree with cited source material from Peter Lurvey down to my ancestor Peltiah Day - and on down as far as I can reach to the present day.        

    

                 

 

                      

       

                      

Above: I'm pretty sure this one's a vampire - just saying.
      

                  

          

       

               

            

         

Above: From Ancient Russian Jews of the Arctic Circle and their strong vampiric connections right on down to Mom. Further sources available on request. Bring your own garlic.

II.

Then, for some reason, I decided to look him up. 

(I know what you're thinking. "Is this person obsessed with connections to serial killers like Alex Murdaugh and Dr. H.H. Holmes?" Not really. I'm just a curious asshat.)

              

The reason for my renewed curiosity wasn't Peter Lurvey himself. It was the actor, Michael C. Hall. I've been watching the last twenty years (or so) of Dexter on some streaming service or another, and sadly, I have become somewhat hooked. I'd put off watching the program for years because it can be a little gruesome; however, I like to at least think I'm not all that squeamish. It was also nice to not have to find something new to watch every single night. Plus, there was an added bonus: I got to watch my cousin Dan's boy, Jadon Wells, who plays Dexter's son in the show. All in all, it seemed cool enough. And the program was largely filmed in Long Beach, CA, my hometown. Seemed like a winner to me.     

                    

Above: My young cousin Jadon Wells, alongside Michael C. Hall

But you know me. I have to dig. So, I went to FamilySearch.org to check out the ancestry of Michael C. Hall. I wanted to check out "Dexter's" lineage (or at least Mr. Hall's).

That's when I saw it again. 

The name Peter Lurvey. My ancestor, Old Pete.

Say what?

Now, before I could get all excited about sharing a common ancestor with (the actor who plays) "Dexter Morgan," I discovered the truth. It didn't pan out. I have no idea why my ancestor, Peter Lurvey, was placed in a family tree for actor Michael C. Hall. Hall's ancestry is 98% Southern, and Peter Lurvey was definitely from not-so-south Massachusetts. I could see the connections the submitter was trying to make, but they weren't plausible. Basically, they sucked. Another one for the "crap genealogy" pile.

I have absolutely no family tree connection to the actor Michael C. Hall.

However, not wanting to be "unthorough," I figured I might as well take another look at my ancestor Peter Lurvey. He might not be the umpteenth great-grandfather of an actor who plays a do-gooder-serial killer (???), but he was still mine. (The ancestor that is...)

So, "Grandpa Pete," what's up with your bad self these days?

As if laughing afar, Grandpa Pete seemed to reply to me by proxy in written form:

"Well, dude, did you know that I was frickn' Jewish? Did you even bother to look that I was from someplace called Archangel on the Arctic Circle in Russia? Or at least that is the story of my life as it got passed down."

I could only reply: "What the flock, Grandpa Pete? How did I not see this before? How did I not even see a rumor that we had Russian Jews from the Arctic Circle in the family tree?"

Grandda Pete just seemed to laugh as he replied, "Dude, that ain't the half of it."

Funny thing about stories, though—there's always an element of truth in them somewhere. AND, even if it's false, why has it been a rumor for centuries, and why the Hell did they pick Archangel, Russia, on the White Sea? What did they do in 1675? Google it? Right.

Beats me.

III.

So I decided to cast a wider net. 

If "Grandpa Pete" was rumored to have been a Russian Jew from the city of Archangel on the Arctic Circle, what else was he? What else could I learn about this previously neglected ancestor of mine?

It was then that I saw the next crack in the Arctic Ice.  

Yeah, that's when I saw this from the image above: Why is Grandpa Pete mentioned in this book, American Vampires?

So you mean to tell me that now I have a "Non-relation to an actor who plays a serial killer and who has a faux ancestor in his family tree that is my real ancestor who, unbeknownst to me before, was rumored to be a Russian Jew from the city of Archangel on the Arctic Circle and has major vampire connections?

Dude! Does it get any better than that?!?!?!

Is your head starting to hurt, too?

Okay, well, we'll get to all that - maybe. You see, I guess it turned out that it isn't Grandpa Pete who is mentioned in the book above, but his great-grandson, a guy by the same name, Peter Lurvey. It turns out that this next-generation Peter Lurvey is a hero from the Revolutionary War. I know, I know, that's hardly a vampiric event. (still, nonetheless fairly cool)  

However, I guess the connection (or at least the more curious thing) is more about where "Pete, Jr." lived - a place called Dogtown.

A place now abandoned.

      

  Above: Charles E. Mann, In the Heart of Cape Ann; or, The Story of Dogtown (Gloucester, MA: The Procter Bros. Co., 1896).           

By the look of the cover, Dogtown does not sound like a nice place filled with puppies and sunshine. Looks like a bit of a "grab your broomstick" kinda place.

Most of what I can glean out of these two books is that Pete Jr. had a daughter who married a guy named Standwood. Check this sh*t out:

             

...marries the daughter of Peter Lurvey...    

   And further still...tales of vampirism associated with, well, Mom. Edgads!

     

Above: Various pages from Bob Curran, American Vampires: Their True Bloody History from New York to California (Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books, 2013)

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking. None of this links, my ancestor Peter Lurvey as an actual vampire. Or doesn't it? I mean, is your ancestor's name (and or his like-named descendant) in any book somewhere associated with the word "vampire" in any way?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Are we not the people we associate with? (Yuckity-yuk.)

Ya know, vampires throughout time? Again beats me.            

So while this end of the story only connects "Pete, Jr's" daughter, who married Mr. Stanwood, to someplace called Dogtown and as the "crazy cobbler dentist" to "transvestite vampire types" like "Old Ruth" and crazy ass "Tammy Younger," it doesn't exactly not link my Lurvey family connections in not having to deal with vampires.

Hey, wake up! You got all that?

Well, my story isn't it? lol.

Wink!

😉