A Pilgrimage to Poe

Edgar Allan Poe - author of such works as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and The Pendulum, and - my personal favorite - The Raven - was born Edgar Poe on January 19th, 1909 in Boston. Following his parents death at a young age, he was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia and, though never formally adopted, took Allan as his middle name.
Following a term of enlistment in the Army, in 1829 Poe moved to Baltimore for a time to stay with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, her daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm (Poe's first cousin and his eventual wife), his brother Henry, and his invalid grandmother Elizabeth Cairnes Poe. While there Poe published his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems.



By 1865 a movement had begun, under the leadership of Miss Sara Sigourney Rice, to provide for a new monument to Baltimore’s neglected poet. The following appeared in the Baltimore Daily Commercial on October 9th, 1865:
"EDGAR A. POE.
This gifted but unfortunate genius, whose name will always be cherished by the lovers of true literature, died in this city sixteen years ago the present month, and was buried in a private grave-yard attached to the Westminster Presbyterian Church, corner of Fayette and Green Streets. No stone, not even a crude stake, marks the resting place of the author of the “Raven” and “The Bells.” The sexton alone knows the spot where sleep the remains of Edgar A. Poe.
It is always pleasant to chronicle suitable memorials to the illustrious dead, and we are, therefore, pleased to learn of an effort by an appreciative class of our community properly to honor the name of the poet. At a meeting of the Public School Teachers’ Association of Baltimore, held at the Western High School, on Saturday, 7th inst., a committee was appointed to arrange for the early erection of a becoming monument over the dust of one whose early history was intimately identified with this city, where not a few of his former associates and friends still live. The movement, we need not add, is an exceedingly commendable one, and has our best wishes for its complete success."

In 1913 another stone was placed on the site of Poe's original gravesite and emblazoned with a raven in honor of one of the world's most famous narrative poems that made Poe widely popular but didn't bring him much financial success.
Since 1949 on the night of the anniversary of Poe’s birth, a mysterious stranger has entered the cemetery and left as tribute a partial bottle of cognac and three roses on Poe’s grave. The identity of the stranger, referred to affectionately as the Poe Toaster, is unknown. It is thought that the three roses represent the three people whose remains sleep for eternity together under the monument but no one is quite sure why the cognac is left. Like a lot of Poe's life, it remains another mystery.


Over sixty years later, a church was erected over the top of the graveyard on brick piers that straddled gravestones and burial vaults to create what later Baltimoreans referred to as the "catacombs." Completed in 1852, the church remained in active use until 1977 when care of the premises was assumed by the University of Maryland School of Law which owns the surrounding land. The burying grounds were cleaned up and the church was renovated for public use as Westminster Hall and remains under the auspices of the non-profit Westminster Preservation Trust who conduct tours of the grounds and building several times a month. Unfortunately, none of those times were while we were there.


Driving through the narrow, hilly, and congested streets of Baltimore was not the most fun thing in the world but we managed to find our hotel without too much difficulty and were able to check in early. I had requested a room on a high floor facing northeast so that we might be able to have a nice view of the Inner Harbor, which was only four blocks away, so I was quite delighted to find out we had been given a room on the 37th floor - the highest floor in the hotel. We had a great view and the room was very nice in that it was a one-bedroom suite which meant I could go to bed at night, shut the door, and let the girls giggle to their heart's content! I would highly recommend The Tremont Plaza to anyone going to Baltimore!


I did manage to talk the girls into walking over towards Fells Point with me but it's a bit of a haul and by the time we got there, Amanda's feet were starting to bother her and she really just wanted to go back to the hotel. Knowing that she was going to be doing a lot of walking in Washington DC the next day I decided it probably wasn't a good idea to push her much further so we caught a taxi and went back to our hotel for the night where the girls commenced their giggling and I hid in my bedroom with the door shut and the TV on while enjoying the comfort of my king-size bed!
The video of pictures that I put together for this part of our trip is set to music by the Alan Parsons Project from their debut 1976 album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Fittingly for this post, the name of the album is taken from the 1908 complete collection of Poe's works. Just as a small bit of rock history, the song I've chosen to use, The Raven, was the first rock song ever to feature a digital vocoder - or voice encoder if you will. I owned this album back in 1977 and just loved it even though it only rose to #38 on Billboard's Pop Album charts. I hope you enjoy the music as well as the pictures in the video - I tried to make it slow enough so you can read the captions!
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