Curator's Choice

Episode 54: Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum

• Ayla Anderson • Episode 54

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Join us as we delve into the tragic and mysterious world of Edgar Allan Poe, one of literature's most intriguing figures. Discover his legacy and unravel the secrets of his life at the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. 

 🕯️ Melancholy and Masterpieces  🎭
Explore how Poe's tumultuous adolescence, marked by loss and upheaval, fostered a sense of melancholy that permeated his future works, including "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Raven," and my personal favorite, "The Tell-Tale Heart." Discover often overlooked aspects of Poe's life, such as his career as a book critic, his role as the inventor of the detective story, and his fascination with the cosmos.

🔍 Unveiling Poe's Life, Death, and Legacy  ⚰️
Even in death, Poe remains shrouded in intrigue, with his body being reburied no less than three times in the same cemetery. We'll also examine the legend of the Poe Toaster, a mysterious cloaked figure who sneaked into the cemetery and left a tribute for Poe on his birthday until 2009.

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Curator's Choice - A podcast for history nerds and museum lovers

Enrica Jang:

My name is Enrika Jang. I'm the executive director of Poe Baltimore and the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore. Maryland Poe House in Baltimore is the last surviving home in the city where Edgar Allan Poe and his family were known to have lived. This is a city pretty famous for Poe and he lives here now because he, you know, is buried here. We have the body.

Ayla Sparks:

Through quite a journey, actually, indeed, indeed.

Enrica Jang:

Poe in his lifetime never owned property, but now that he's dead you can visit three of the houses he lived in. There's one in Philadelphia run by the National Park Service. There's the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, new York, and then there's the Poe House in Baltimore. There's a wonderful museum to Poe in Richmond, virginia. They don't have. They've got a lot of Poe stuff but they're not a Poe house. It's really one of the only advantages we have over them. It's a fantastic museum and absolutely wonderful and we love those folks down there too. But Poe in Baltimore again, the city is known for Poe and his father's family from Baltimore. His grandparents served in the Revolution as well as the War of 1812. So the Poe family pretty important to Baltimore history.

Ayla Sparks:

I didn't know that Poe himself had actually been in the Army before as well. That was kind of shocking to me.

Enrica Jang:

Yeah, when he was enlisted he did pretty well in the Army and he was kind of noted and exceptional. And then he was sent to be to train to be an officer over at West Point and didn't survive there very long, so but they like him now. West Point did you know, kick him out when he was court-martialed. But they like him now and you can visit a bust in their library, their English department especially.

Ayla Sparks:

I was going to say is it because he became famous that they decided to like him? That's how it goes, they do.

Enrica Jang:

They like him now. Same thing with UVA he had to get kicked out, but they like him now. He's their most famous college dropout, that's fantastic.

Ayla Sparks:

Whenever you're talking about Poe, I feel like everyone knows him as kind of just like this tragic story and that's reflected in his writing. But throughout his life it actually is. I mean, it seems like almost every step of the way there's something tragic that influences him later on in life. We'll start at the beginning of Poe, where he was born, kind of following through his life, because it really is just pockmarked with these little bits of tragedy.

Enrica Jang:

Well, poe is the son of traveling actors. So his father's family from Baltimore, his mother, a British actress as young as nine years old on the stage when she comes to the United States. And Poe's father, david, is living in Baltimore, young and being groomed to be something boring like a lawyer. Then instead he attends the theater, falls in love with the theater, falls in love with this beautiful British actress and essentially runs away with the circus. So Edgar Allan Poe born in Boston because his parents were performing there at the time. Later, one of the first mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston because his parents were performing there at the time Later, one of the first mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe's life is what happens to his father.

Enrica Jang:

He disappears. Traveling actor, not really so great on the stage. The reviews that exist of his performances are pretty dismal a little stiff, been forgetting his lines, maybe a bit of a drinker and like to get into fights with some of the reviewers who said nasty things about him on the stage. So his career didn't match the aspirations and he disappears. Now the conjecture is maybe he abandons his young family. He and his wife have a son named Henry Leonard and then have a little boy named Edgar and a little girl named Rosalie, but he disappears from the picture entirely. We don't have a place of death, we don't have a cause of death, we don't have a burial place, we don't have anything. And his parents even never hear him again. So even if he'd abandoned his wife and children, you'd think mom and dad might have heard something. But he disappears from the picture. So he may have died on the road or he may have in fact abandoned the family.

Enrica Jang:

All we know is that Poe's mother is alone in 1811 when she falls very, very ill In Richmond. She'd already been suffering from tuberculosis but she finally succumbs to her illness. And Poe's mother is noted for her performances on the stage, unlike her husband, quite famous, famed is not a good fortune for any member of the Poe family but very well known. Ethereal beautiful played the great parts Ophelia and Juliet and that kind of thing on stage. So noted for this, a comedian and a singer. She's so good, in fact, that the theater in Richmond actually appeals to the public on her behalf, saying this beautiful light of the stage, desperately ill, has these children alone. Again, no mention of what's happened to the husband, but she's by herself and so the society kind of rallies around her and it's kind of fashionable to be at this dying actress's side. And that's how the Allen family learns of Poe.

Enrica Jang:

John and Frances Allen are a couple, childless couple, in the city of Richmond. Edgar Allen Poe's oh sorry, john Allen is a Scottish immigrant and kind of upwardly mobile, and his wife no children of her own, but they are patrons of the theater and she is present when Poe's mother passes away and so she's very eager to take in little Edgar. And so kind of cataclysmic for the children. They're split up Henry Leonard is taken in by the grandparents here in Baltimore, edgar is taken in by the Allen family, which is now how we get the name Edgar Allen Poe, and Rosalie is taken in by another family and the three children, rosalie's taken in by the McKenzies and Richmond, and the three children are kept apart, or raised apart, I should say. But the older boy is old enough to know what has happened to his family, so he's asking for his little brother. What about Edgar? So that's how the families kind of stay in loose contact with one another. Families kind of stay in loose contact with one another. Even though John and Frances Allen even moved to London for a brief period of time they are keeping a correspondence with the Poes in Baltimore and John Allen's even writing some letters to Edgar's brother, henry. So that's how they sort of keep in contact.

Enrica Jang:

Later, when Edgar and his foster father begin to fall out, poe was never formally adopted by the Allen family, but he is. He's raised to be their son, he's given their name, he is treated as their son. But he is always told you're only a foster son, don't forget it. You need to be grateful. And so you can imagine the kind of sullen teenager that an Edgar Allen Poe would have been. We might have a little bit of pity for John Allan, but the two of them really do clash and they start to just kind of come apart.

Enrica Jang:

And so Poe Edgar finds a little bit of refuge with his Baltimore family and later, when the two men split irrevocably and Poe's foster mother has passed away, poe is taken in by his relatives here in Baltimore and that's kind of how his new Baltimore chapter begins, moving from the relative wealth of the Allen family to the almost poverty of the Poe family. And yet they take him in, welcome him in, he is taken into his aunt's home, becomes close to the family, so close in fact that he marries his first cousin, virginia. That's very, very close. His aunt becomes his mother-in-law and the three of them stay a family for the rest of their lives. So incredible sort of surge of different forces in Poe's life. We can see just how important family becomes to him. And sort of a weird part of Poe's story that he marries his 13-year-old cousin. But that is, you know, part of the story too.

Enrica Jang:

Later, just about five years into their marriage, virginia starts to exhibit the same symptoms, the same disease that takes Poe's mother, and Poe sees this, he's really no stranger to this. Tuberculosis kills his mother, kills his foster mother, kills, likely had something to do with the things that killed his brother. And so for Virginia to exhibit these symptoms this is something he understands very, very well Kills his first love, his first Poe's first crush. She also dies of tuberculosis, and so just a vicious, terrible disease. But Virginia gets better, it gets worse, gets better, it gets worse.

Enrica Jang:

And it's this time, when she's kind of going through this oscillation in her disease, that Poe begins to develop these ideas of what makes the most poetical subject in the world, and he very famously says the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical subject in the world and he has a beautiful dying wife at home. So it's hard not to see that as at least some of the inspiration in his work. Eventually Virginia dies and Poe only survives her about two years. He is kind of trying to crawl out of his grief after her death and seems he's courting again, intent on marrying again, maybe start a magazine, maybe continue, but dies under mysterious circumstances in Baltimore just two years after Virginia. So that's the Penny tour of his life. Lots of different twists and turns in there.

Ayla Sparks:

And there's definitely a lot more to it. But you know, in the scope of a single podcast episode, sure, sure.

Enrica Jang:

Poe again, that kind of connection to Baltimore never really goes away, even though he's raised by another family. He's a little boy too, but he's aware that he has this other family and his brother, at different times, comes to visit him and so they do become quite close and that's the connection for Poe to his Baltimore family. Some people don't know that Edgar's older brother is also a writer, a published writer, writes even a poem based on one of his brother's failed romances, and so this is something that they have in common which is really fascinating. A very artistic family altogether. Yes, absolutely. We know that Poe Edgar was writing poetry even in his teens, as young as his teens. We see that he always considers himself a poet, wants to be a poet, loves Byron, and we see that. But it's that connection to his brother that we think likely contributed to his burgeoning interest in short story, in tales. There's a burgeoning magazine industry at that time and a lot of different writing contests and just periodicals popping up all over the country, this huge surge and this kind of new kind of publishing in the United States. And so poetry then is now kind of difficult to make your living. But Poe sees that his older brother is making maybe even a little bit of money submitting short stories to the magazine industry of the day, and so I feel that you can kind of see this sort of timeline start to converge.

Enrica Jang:

Poe, as you mentioned, was in the military for a brief time. After he leaves his foster father's home, tries to support himself, and the way he does that is by joining the military and pursuing that career. Once he gets to West Point it's a very austere life, not really something that he's interested in continuing. So the story goes that he gets himself kicked out. And once he gets himself kicked out of West Point he has nowhere to go and the connection to his foster father is over, over over. His foster father will not forgive him for squandering that opportunity as far as he's concerned. So Poe comes to Baltimore and then his brother dies and Poe was likely there when his brother dies and in a way takes his brother's place in his grandparents' slash aunt's home. His Aunt Mariah is now taking care of the family, taking care of her ailing mother, caring for her own children. She is a widow herself and it's nice to have a man in the house and so she welcomes Edgar into their home and she becomes a kind of a surrogate mother in a lot of ways, and again that family becomes quite close. But Poe, at this time again no money, it's not really clear what he's contributing to the household, but he's writing and gets him noticed by the literary community and he launches a career as a writer and an editor and a contributor to the magazines that employ him.

Enrica Jang:

So that time, in Baltimore, finding a new family, a chosen family as we say today, and this sort of family unit that will sustain him at least for the rest of his life, and then launching his professional writing career, All of that happens at Amity Street and what is today the Edgar Allan Poe house. So it's an important, important part. Now, as I said, though, Poe never owned property. The family was even renting the home at this time. So that's why you can go to a bunch of different cities and everybody has a piece of Poe. He did live in Philadelphia. He did live in New York, Boston, Even though he was born there. Not much of a connection there. Eventually he has a big feud with the city, Lived in Richmond, Virginia, and seemed like he might even have been moving back there at the end of his life had he not died in Baltimore. That had been his intent to return to Richmond.

Ayla Sparks:

So I feel like it's really similar to Abraham Lincoln. It seems like every state you go to is like oh, this is the state of Abraham Lincoln and you're like I thought the last state I was in one of those things where it's everywhere. But so if someone were to come visit, what would they expect to see when they're walking through the house itself?

Enrica Jang:

Well, what do they expect to see, or what do they see? Those are very different things, that's a good point.

Ayla Sparks:

What should they expect to see? What should they?

Enrica Jang:

expect to see. I joke about it because people come to Baltimore kind of expecting that they're going to visit the House of Usher, that they're going to see the spooky, crazy dark mansion on a hill somewhere, and that's not the truth of Poe's life. We're talking about a very humble start and this is a place where Poe begins his professional writing career and makes his family. So it is the remnant of a duplex that originally was built in 1832. It was a standalone property when Poe and his family lived there and it was kind of the edge of town. The city had not pushed as far west at this time. The family actually moves there to escape a cholera epidemic that had taken over in the city. So you move to the edge of town and a little bit healthier and a little bit more room. Of course, eventually when the family leaves it's a private home and rental property and eventually the city pushes further west. So when you come to Baltimore, poe House is what is left of that duplex.

Enrica Jang:

In the 1930s the entire block where Poe House is is scheduled for demolition and to build a housing project, the first housing project in the city of Baltimore. It was the first of five housing projects for Black families in Baltimore in a time of segregation. So this weird sort of piece of history. But Poe House, as it was known to have been, a house that Poe lived in, but that the property itself was scheduled to be demolished.

Enrica Jang:

When the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore learns of the city's plans but also learns that the last surviving home where Poe and his family were known to have lived is about to be lost forever, they step in, beg the city to please save the house. And the compromise that they reach with the city is that they will chop the duplex in half, save the historic half where Poe and his family lived. And then they built the housing project onto Poe House. So when you come Amity Street you see this sort of weird, strange configuration of what is half the one half of the duplex, with a housing block from the housing project built directly onto it. And we've been neighbors now for 80 years.

Ayla Sparks:

I feel like that's a perfect compromise, sort of a strange idea of historic preservation at that time. And then also, like you know, expansion of a city and trying to work with underserved communities. It's kind of just like a really interesting, delicate balance they had to try to make there.

Enrica Jang:

Oh, I wish the history was as rosy as that history of public housing in Baltimore. It's a bit fraught, but they named the housing project the Edgar Allan Poe Homes in recognition of the fact that Poe House was there Initially. The structure that is Poe House was turned into administrative office, was proposed as a health center for the housing project. But then the Poe Society steps in again and about 10 years later for the anniversary the 100-year centenary of Poe's death they managed to establish the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum. It is now 2024. This is our 75th anniversary as a museum, but the housing we've been neighbors now with the housing project sharing a footprint for the last 80 years.

Ayla Sparks:

Do you guys have any big celebrations coming up for your 75th? Oh, we do.

Enrica Jang:

We do. Poe House is the home of the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival and Awards. It's an annual two-day event that we throw, always the weekend closest to Poe's death, obviously for our 75th anniversary. So many different things coincide with that weekend the 75th anniversary of the museum, it's also the 175th anniversary of Poe's death in Baltimore and happens to be the 60th anniversary of Roger Corman's Mask of the Red Death. So we're doing some cool Vincent Price themed stuff for the weekend and you know it's our diamond anniversary. So an extra day of programming. It'll be three days this year. So if there's any for your listeners, if there's any time you want to come to Baltimore to the festival, october 4th and 4th through the 6th is the weekend to come this year.

Ayla Sparks:

Especially if you're a Poe fan.

Enrica Jang:

Especially if you're a Poe fan. Absolutely Come on out 75th Once in a generation opportunity.

Ayla Sparks:

So whenever you do come and visit the museum. I know you were mentioning that there was a telescope, but whenever I think of Poe I never really think of him looking at things as cosmically beautiful, as a star, the stars. I kind of just imagine all about death, which I know is an unfair observation from my limited poetic standpoint. So why don't you tell us a little bit about why a telescope?

Enrica Jang:

Don't worry, you're not alone. It's funny. Poe is famous for these horror stories and is famous for poetry, gothic poetry and that aesthetic and everything. But Poe actually defines a lot of modern genres we have today. He is the inventor of the detective story. It's not that there were no such things as mysteries before there was an Edgar Allan Poe, but Poe was the first in the English language to create a character at the heart of a story whose job it is to solve a mystery by step-by-step process of observation, deduction, reasoning, ratiocination, as it's in his stories. And so Poe is the inventor of the detective story. Mystery Writers of America name their awards, the Edgar Bicots, in honor of Poe.

Enrica Jang:

But Poe is also a science fiction writer. So if you look at some of the stories in Poe's repertoire, at the very end of his life Poe even writes his own cosmology, eureka, sort of his contemplation of the universe, life, the universe and everything, and his ideas about the soul. That it takes light to travel. When we look at stars we might even be looking at the light from dead stars because of so much time that it would take for that light to travel to Earth. It's very poetic observation, but this is something that we understand today.

Enrica Jang:

And so Jules Verne talks about Poe being inspired by Poe, and you know other horror writers obviously inspired by Poe. But Poe was very interested in science, very interested in, especially, enlightenment of his day that's the end of the Spanish Inquisition and it's like turning to science and turning to these modern marvels in his lifetime. So it was very much in his mind. And the telescope that we have at Poe House was an item that belonged to the Allen family, not at a time that he was in Baltimore, but it's mentioned in John Allen's papers and it's known that the little boy had this interest in the telescope and in kind of looking at these things. And so if you can imagine a very young Edgar Allen Poe just beginning to open his eyes to the world and these things that are of interest and are fascinating to him with this poetical sensibility, it's kind of it's kind of cool to sort of see an object that may have in fact inspired, inspired his work.

Ayla Sparks:

Well, and what's really interesting about Poe as well and I feel like this isn't very common is he became quite famous within his lifetime lifetime. So it was great in terms of some types of preservation, such as the house and such as items like the telescope, because if you are known to have they're like, this is going to be something really special. We can tell already it's more likely to be saved, but what made Poe famous in his lifetime? What was so special and different about Poe and his writing that people recognized even early on that it was something that was going to be important into the future?

Enrica Jang:

I love that question Poe throughout his career. It's interesting that the notion that people sometimes bring to Poe has they expect that he was not appreciated in his lifetime or not known even in his early career because he's a magazine editor. So it's a noted position, it's a position of power and tastemaking and Poe, early in his career, makes his bones as a vicious book critic and a writing critic. So if you've ever known like a music reviewer or a movie reviewer, that's just kind of famous because they're so mean. Poe was known for this and he would get kind of personal and kind of nasty and kind of petty Critiqu. So mean. Poe was known for this and he would get kind of personal and kind of nasty and kind of petty critiquing some of these writers, not just their writing but also their person or their intelligence and all this other stuff. He was just known to be so snarky and mean. So he's noted for this and he is noted for being sort of a gothic writer.

Enrica Jang:

One of his early stories that he did write in Amity Street, berenice, the story of a man who, the narrator, marries his cousin and she gets very, very ill and as she gets sicker and sicker, her face recedes into this rictus and he becomes obsessed with her teeth and when he thinks she's dead he rips them out of her face. This is a shocking story and one of the editors who published it he's like why do you want to write about this topic? And Poe's very flippant answer was it's going to sell. This is going to sell magazines for you. So he's known for being a Gothic writer. He's known for being a poet, but he's known for being a critic and an editor for these magazines.

Enrica Jang:

Now he's known to the reading public at this time. He becomes popularly famous with the publication of the Raven in 1845. Even if he didn't know anything about poetry not everybody cares about poetry. They really really should, but not everybody does you still would have heard the Raven almost like a pop song. The Raven is musical and gothic and romantic. There's this repetition. It is never more and never more. These phrases it's easy to say and to repeat and to read and very emotive Right, and so it captures the imagination of the nation.

Enrica Jang:

It flies around the world and Poe becomes famous for the raven, and so this interest in Poe is still there. But you know, just like you might, the reading public might know the name of a reporter at the New Yorker or something like that, but everybody knows Britney Spears. I just compared Edgar Allan Poe to Britney Spears. There you go, but that's what makes him super, super famous and people start really paying attention. But he only, you know only lives another four years after the publication of the Raven.

Enrica Jang:

And a lot happens in that four years. His wife dies, he survives some really nasty scandals in New York, a couple of court cases, is grieving, courting, trying to get married again and trying to take care of his Aunt Mariah, his mother-in-law, who is taking care of him and surviving with him but trying to find a life for them as well. So he does die in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances, just traveling through the city. As a matter of fact, he wasn't even living here any longer when he's passing through. But he dies here just four years after. It's hard to know where he would have gone and what might have happened with his career had he lived longer, but it is good to know that he did achieve something in his lifetime and was recognized for it.

Ayla Sparks:

Because it's so tragic when you learn of someone who is just incredibly famous and looked at one of the greats and they didn't even know in their lifetime. So it's quite satisfying to know that he at least got a glimpse of the popularity of his own work, which is really exciting.

Enrica Jang:

His persona got so much bigger after his death, of course, and the subject matter of his work and stuff, and so he's turned into this iconic, iconic persona and figure. I don't know that even he would have anticipated that. I think he'd be pleased, but I think he'd still be surprised.

Ayla Sparks:

Do you think that the fact that he did die in the manner that he did and that he died so early in his career added to him becoming more popular in his afterlife, or do you think it would have happened regardless?

Enrica Jang:

I think you've got a perfect storm of sort of fame that happens and infamy that sort of makes him almost like a rock star in a way, like just like a young, tumultuous rock and roller burning out hard and fast. Poe was 40, so it's not, he's a spring chicken, but he's still. It is still young and powerful and the work that he wrote in his, you know, in his late 20s and 30s like that's the incredible decade of work. I think that, because of the salacious circumstances of his death and because of the nature of celebrity, a lot of people who are sort of interested in Poe and, as we sort of noted at the beginning of this, that death could come and take you at that time just about any time. This is pre-Civil War medicine, pre-phenobiotics, and people died all the time, and so the death itself was less the shock but the strange circumstances of his death.

Enrica Jang:

And then, because of the nature of celebrity, you have people at the end of that person's life behaving quite badly. The most famous example of this is Rufus Griswold, who likely was in Lifetime what we would call a frenemy, one of those colleagues that you tolerate and can't stand, and he uses the occasion of Poe's death to kind of benefit himself but also malign Poe's character and say some really nasty stuff about him that to this day has to get kind of raked out of Poe's history that he was insane, that he had incestuous relationships with every female member of his family, that all of this is sort of nastiness that people, even today we have to kind of correct them like that he didn't kill anybody and stuff like that. But even something is. You know, something in his life is mundane. As the doctor the physician that was in attendance in Poe's last days he that was in attendance in Poe's last days he dines out for the rest of his life talking about the last days of Poe and what starts out as a simple death in the hospital turns into deathbed speeches and extra symptoms. He goes on tour, he writes a book, he becomes the mayor of a small town not too far outside of Baltimore and eventually convicted of fraud. That is crazy. But it's celebrity's celebrity right, and we see this today. All nothing's new. We see all of that today when someone dies and then that kind of tabloidy kind of interest and all of that springs up around Poe and makes it even bigger and even darker and the persona of Poe's writing.

Enrica Jang:

Poe is one of the first people to write in the first person of a madman, of a murderer, and it's not so strange today we see horror writers do this all the time, where they write in the first person and you know that they're not, you know, killing anybody, you don't think, but they're just coming up with something. We recognize that an artist can do that. Poe's one of the first people to do that and it's even considered this morally suspect gift Like who could? What's wrong with you that you could do that? And insanity is taboo and murder, of course, is this dreadful sin. And who could write it?

Ayla Sparks:

Which, I'm sure, made it a lot easier for everyday people to believe a lot of these rumors that were coming up after his death, because they were like well, clearly he was crazy. Did you read some of his work, right?

Enrica Jang:

And it just makes it so much darker and people are looking for those strains and so I think that's that perfect storm of fame and circumstance that lends itself. But again, I don't think that he would be displeased about this. He kind of encouraged this enigmatic idea of himself and when he was asked about his own biography would lie often and kind of be a liar, liar face about some of the stuff that he came from and happened to him. So it's fascinating and it's fun and you get to be a historian at Poe House and tell people, well, actually, this thing that you think you know they don't really know. But yeah, there's all of that.

Ayla Sparks:

So what ended up happening to his mother-in-law after his death? Do we know we?

Enrica Jang:

do Mariah Clem? She goes on to kind of live cast upon the kindness of a lot of her nephew's admirers. She lives with a number of different families who take her in out of their you know association with Edgar and their admiration of him, and when one family gets sick of her she kind of gets shuffled to another one. Lives in a bunch of different states eventually. Eventually kind of runs out and returns to Baltimore and is living in a widow's, wants to get into a widow's home, falls very, very ill. What's fascinating about Mariah Clem? She does survive everyone, but she eventually dies in the same building where Poe died, in the exact same hospital, in the same building where Poe died, and that was actually a great comfort to her and her dying wish was to be buried next to her darling eddie, and she got her wish and so, but, uh, she survives him by at least in, uh, another 20 years. Like a long time, a long time.

Ayla Sparks:

so then her daughter by like 22, 24 years. Yes, wow, virginia dies first. There's also a lot of we talked we briefly went over this in the beginning but Poe's final resting place not final for quite a while so will you tell us a little bit about the chaos that was his casket situation?

Enrica Jang:

It's not seeing. Westminster Hall, where Poe was buried, is less than a mile from Poe House and our understanding is that it was a graveyard first, before the church was put there, and so it's a graveyard that Poe himself in fact visited because there were members of the Poe family there. But Poe was buried no fewer than three times in the same cemetery. When Poe dies, as I said, he was traveling through the city of Baltimore. He wasn't even supposed to be here for very long. He was going to catch a train and he's traveling from Richmond to New York to close his affairs in New York and scoop up his aunt Mariah and move on back to Richmond where he is engaged to be married and starting a new magazine and it seems like he's on the upswing. But comes to Baltimore and promptly goes missing and there's a period of about four or five days in the city where we don't know what happened to him, don't know where he was, but he turns up again in terrible condition in this tavern, taken to the hospital where he dies. So he happens to die in Baltimore where he has family, which means there's a place to put him, and he is buried in his grandfather's plot over at in the graveyard with the other members of the Poe family his brother, his grandparents and his aunts and uncles.

Enrica Jang:

Years later, the one thing they're not making more of is land, and there's this inconvenient graveyard in the middle of the city, and so they want to maybe redevelop it, reclaim some of this land. Now there's a law in Maryland at the time that says that you can't reclaim a graveyard well, the cemetery if there's a church. That's what makes a graveyard a cemetery the church. So a church is erected in this graveyard and a couple of the stones are sort of like moved around. Some people are like put underneath the church, but the church is buried over top the existing graveyard. So when you do come to Westminster, it's actually kind of cool to walk along the side of the building because it creates these really cool catacombs. They're built up on piers over the existing graveyard and you can actually take tours and visit underneath the church to see some of these really really cool stones and stuff. And this graveyard dates all the way back. Pre-revolution Got people like heroes of the Revolution in the War of 1812 buried there. Lots of really famous people in Baltimore also buried there.

Enrica Jang:

So it's a big deal, this place, what this effectively does, though, is Poe is now at the back of the cemetery, and he has been left in an unmarked grave. Now, this sounds disrespectful. When Poe initially dies, though, there's not a ton of money and none of the other family members have stones. The family eventually says that they commissioned a stone to be put on Poe's grave, but it's destroyed in a freak train accident. So checks in the mail, and the grave stone is never placed. So Poe is in an unmarked grave, and now, with the building of the church, he's in the back of the cemetery, and people who are coming to Baltimore want to pay their respects. They have to be led to the spot by a sexton or a member of the family, and it's you know.

Enrica Jang:

The city of Baltimore starts to get a little heat for not properly honoring Poe, and then there's some other cities that wouldn't mind having him New York, for instance, where his wife is buried, or Richmond, or you know, for instance, where his wife is buried, or Richmond, or you know, philadelphia, where he wrote the Raven. So, eventually, a schoolteacher as they often do, a schoolteacher comes in, tries to save the day. A schoolteacher and her students put together a pennies for Poe campaign to give Poe a more fitting monument and finally give the man a headstone. But to give him a monument and what they're trying to do is actually a pretty cool historic thing, because this is the first monument ever created for an American writer in the United States. So that's a really cool thing that they're trying to do.

Enrica Jang:

Eventually, a committee is formed, money is put together and they're going to give him this beautiful stone monument.

Enrica Jang:

Question is where to put it, because the placement of the church now has put Poe's grave a little too close to the back wall of the church. So they decide to dig him up and move him over 12 feet and they're going to put the stone there. But some people on the committee still don't like this because they've gone through this trouble to build this beautiful, create this beautiful monument and do the money. They want it to be a place of honor. They briefly talk about reconfiguring, like the stone wall in the cemetery and moving stuff around and somebody's like you know, let's just dig him up again and move him to the front. And that's what they do. They dig him up, move him to the front and he is placed under this beautiful monument at the front corner of the cemetery. So when you come to Westminster Hall, he's front and center, right right there at the corner of Fayette and Green Street, and so that is how Edgar Allan Poe came to be buried three times in the same cemetery.

Ayla Sparks:

And there's also an interesting tale of cognac and toasting.

Enrica Jang:

Yes, yes, yes, so urban legend time for years and years and years. A mysterious figure, cloaked figure, would sneak into the cemetery and people noticed that around Poe's birthday somebody was leaving a tribute, it seemed, of a cognac and roses at Poe's grave. I won't tell you whether or not I really believe all of the legend, but we know that it kind of took hold, and certainly took hold like sort of imagination legend. But we know that it kind of took hold and certainly took hold like sort of imagination. And so people started to have a vigil every year to wait for the toaster to appear, leave his tribute and disappear into the night. To our knowledge, the identity of the toaster has never been really like unmasked or anything like that.

Enrica Jang:

I remember as a high school student, all the way in Ohio, remembering seeing a little bit of a hullabaloo because somebody tried to take a picture or something of that. So the tradition seemed like it went on for quite a while, but it kind of it stopped officially in 2009, which happens to coincide with Poe's 200th birthday. So if it was going to end in the bicentennial, that makes a lot of sense and it would happen to be also the advent of really good cell phones, when everybody was taking pictures of everything. Try sneaking around now. They wouldn't have been able to get away with that much longer. So yeah, but the Poe toaster continues to be a really cool Baltimore tradition and we try to have a little bit of fun with it. Our birthday celebration is a Poe toaster murder mystery every year for Poe's birthday. And who killed the Poe toaster? Why'd they kill the Poe toaster? What's happening here?

Ayla Sparks:

Oh, that's so fun, we do something fun. Well, thank you so much for sharing Poe and the House Museum with us.

Enrica Jang:

Thank you for this opportunity. It's lovely. And, yeah, please come on out to Poe House. And again, 75th anniversary. This is a big weekend. We Victoria Price, daughter of Vincent Price will be coming out and we'll be doing a screening of the 60th anniversary of Mask of the Red Death. That's going to be a lot of fun. Our Black Cat Ball is I like to get dressed up dripping with black diamonds and a lot of gothic finery. That's a lot of fun. Our Bloody Mary Brunch we've got some really fun stuff. But what's really great about the festival? It's a free event. You can come on out, hang out with Poe people, pick up a lot of Poe stuff. We've got a stage, music, food, vendors just a lot of fun in Baltimore. And, of course, come and see the man himself over at Westminster Hall.

Ayla Sparks:

Great, awesome. Well, thank you so much.

Enrica Jang:

Thank you for having me Appreciate it.