Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Allan Poe Was Her Friend,” Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), vol. XXXII, no. 33, April 26, 1903, p. 55, cols. 4-5

[page 56, column 4:]

For Many Years She Cherished Letters and Poems Which Her Beauty Had Inspired-Her Own Career as Sad as That of the Unfortunate Genius.

Special Correspondence of The Inter Ocean.

BALTIMORE, Md., April 23.-Mrs. Kate Henderson of 403 North Fulton avenue is one of the little handful of people still living who knew Edgar Allan Poe in his student days. Mrs. Henderson celebrated her eighty-seventh birthday recently, and, though more than three score years and ten passed since young Poe was one of the callers her father's house and a member of the circle of young people to which she belonged, the recollection of her acquaintance with the brilliant genius is a source of the keenest pleasure to her.

Though bent and frail looking, Mrs. Henderson still bears the marks of what in her earlier years must have been a strong and extremely attractive personality. She has reached the point now when, owing to failing eyesight and to hands crippled with rheumatism, she has little to occupy her attention, but she brightens invariably when the name of her poet friend is mentioned.

She was an aunt of the late Colonel Charles Raphun, and now makes her home with Mrs. Estelle V. Raphun, and when asked by Mrs. Raphun the other day if she had not been a sweetheart of Poe she assented with a flash of what in a debutante might have been called vanity. She relapsed Into silence again, but in a minute or two looked up again and said: “Oh, no, not a sweetheart; only a friend. He was never a beau of mine — only a friend.”

When asked where she met the writer she responded, with great dignity, “At my father's house.” Then, little by little, she told the rest of the story- how, when she was a young girl of 15 and the poet was seven or eight years older, he was brought to her father's house to call. She could not remember with whom he came, but thought it probable that it was with his brother, who was employed in the city.

Young Poe was then a student at West Point, she said, and came to Baltimore during vacation time, especially to see an aunt who lived somewhere in the neighborhood of Bond street. Matthew Bleakley, Mrs. Henderson's father, and his family lived not far off — her recollection was that it was in Plowman street that their home was at the time. Soon the young people became acquainted.

Poe a Very Pretty Man.

In those days it seems that military uniforms were as greatly admired as now, and the impression made by the young West Pointer in his cadet finery has remained during all these years with at least one of his. [column 5:] fair admirers. Asked to describe him, the old lady leaned forward in her chair and tapped her cane lightly on the floor — she supports herself with a cane now as she moves about the house. “He was a very pretty man, a very pretty man,” she said, emphasizing the assertion with the light taps of her cane.

Then she added that he always was dressed in his uniform when he came to see her, and that he bad dark eyes and dark curly hair. “We always called him Mr. Allan Poe,” she said, “and I never heard him called anything else, but these days I bear people say Edgar Allan Poe.”

Asked what the young people did to entertain themselves in those days, and especially what form of diversion she employed in the company of the young cadet, she said: “We used to take long walks together.” And that seemed to be the extent of the diversions, for she never remembered having gone to a party with the cadet, and neither did she recall having seen him at church.

After his return to the military academy, young Allan Poe wrote to pretty little Miss Kate Bleakley a number of times and sent her little poems on several occasions. Poe was dismissed from West Point in 1831, and went from there to Richmond, where he remained for some little time, and where he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1833. A few months before this Miss Bleakley, though less than 17, was married to William B. Paine. The correspondence had ceased meanwhile, and, so far as she could remember now, she never met Mr. Allan again.

Troubles came, fast and thick to pretty Kate Bleakley after her marriage. She was thrice widowed before she was 40. Her first husband, Mr. Paine, by whom she had two children, was one of the party that made the trial trip on one of the first locomotives used on the road to Ellicott City. He died of hydrophobia from the bite of a pet Spitz dog a few years after the marriage. The widow subsequently married a Mr. Spangler. who died of smallpox soon afterward. The third husband was named Henderson and, like the others, a Baltimorean.

After engaging in business here for some time Mr. Henderson found a desirable opening in Philadelphia, and with his wife and family moved to that city. In a short time an epidemic of cholera broke out in the City of Brotherly Love, and Mr. Henderson, after an illness of two or three hours, died, a victim of the scourge.

Has Cherished His Letters.

In the meantime through all the changes of these years the letters and poems from Poe to Kate Bleakley, were cherished by that lady and her family.

But to nobody had they greater charm than young Annie Paine, Mrs. Henderson's daughter by her first husband, a young girl who is said to have inherited her mother's beauty and attractive qualities, who occasionally indulged in verse writing herself.

The young girl was invited to New Orleans to visit relatives, and the letters and poems being among her choicest possessions, she carried them with her on the visit. The time passed pleasantly, but one day, just as the young girl had finished a letter to her mother, she was stricken with that dreadful malady of the gulf cities, yellow fever, and another chapter of grief was added to the mother's strange succession of sad experiences.

News of her daughter's death reached Mrs. Henderson first, and soon afterward the letter, with its glowing account of happy days, which had been posted just before the girl's illness, arrived. Later she was informed that all of her daughter's effects had been burned after her death, and with them the letters and poems from Poe.

Mrs. Henderson had two other children, one of them a son by her third husband, but they also have preceded her to the grave. Eight years ago she came to Baltimore to make her home with Colonel Raphun, and now is cared for by Mrs. Raphun. The section of the city in which Mrs. Henderson lived in her girlhood days was the scene of many interesting happenings: She remembers still the demonstrations and the festivities in honor of Lafayette's visit in 1824. She says that with her sisters and other little companions she witnessed the parade from the old Christ church, then at Front and Baltimore streets, and that she saw the Marquis as he passed along Baltimore street In the procession in his honor. She remembers still, she says, the handsome arches along the way and the gala decorations.