Text: Jeffrey A. Savoye, “One meed of justice long delayed: A History of the Poe Memorial Grave” (2025)

So much attention and controversy has surrounded the topic of Poe's death that it is perhaps only appropriate that it has come to taint his burial as well. Consequently, let us dispose of the main controversy right up front. I am not going to deal with matters leading up to Poe's death, merely afterward.(1) Poe died on October 7, 1849 in the institution that had long been known as the Washington University Hospital, although at the time it had evolved into the Baltimore City Marine Hospital. He was buried the next day, October 8. Already, we have controversy, even if a minor one, since October 9 has also been suggested. The October 9 date appears to be based on the fact that the most prominent obituaries began to appear on that date, although the earliest obituary, in the Baltimore Patriot and Commercial Gazette appeared on October 8. One or more Baltimore correspondents sent letters announcing the death to various newspapers, and these letters appeared in the issues for October 9, but bearing the date of October 8 for the letter. None of the notices say anything about a viewing or a burial, but speed was a valid concern in an era before embalming, which did not become a standard practice until the Civil War. (Think of Poe's tale “The Oblong Box,” published only 5 years earlier, in 1844, where the wife, having grown ill suddenly and died in a foreign country, is being shipped home for burial and the body is packed in a box of salt to slow down the process of decay.) We will, therefore, settle on October 8, which is not only quite reasonable but more than suitable for our purposes.

Although Poe family tradition has held that his body was laid out for viewing in the home of his uncle, Henry Herring, it seems more likely that his body was placed in a coffin and made available in the rotunda of the hospital. Again, we have a small controversy. It was common at the time for a body to be shown in the house where he or she died, but this was because it was common for people to die at home. Hospitals were a fairly new innovation, and not a particularly popular one. While the Herrings lived quite near the hospital, it would have been a good deal of effort for little purpose to move Poe to their home, especially for such a short period of time.

We have Dr. Moran's claim in November 1849 that Poe's remains were visited by “sone of the first individuals of the city” and in 1885 by “hundreds of his acquaintances and friends.” Both claims are best ignored. The Rev. William T. D. Clemm, a cousin of Poe's wife, recalled that he had gone to the rotunda to officiate the funeral and prepared a eulogy, but did not deliver it because so few were present.(4) What was the coffin made of? Dr. Moran claimed that it was poplar stained in imitation of walnut, with no cushion for the head, with plated handles and no plate for the name. Henry Herring claimed that he had provided the coffin, which was mahogany and constructed by Charles Suter, a cabinet maker and undertaker on Baltimore Street. Herring also stated that Neilson Poe provided the hack and hearse. (When the coffin was exhumed in 1875, pieces of it broke off and several were kept. They are mahogany.)

Yet again, we have controversy as to who and how many attended Poe's coffin to the cemetery. Neilson Poe stated in a contemporary letter to Mrs. Clemm that there were only four persons in addition to himself, these people being the minister, Henry Herring, Dr. Snodgrass and Zacheus Collins Lee, a former classmate of Poe's from the University of Virginia who had become a lawyer in Baltimore. Other accounts also include Herring's daughter Elizabeth and her husband, Edward Morton Smith.(5) We will settle on these seven, plus George W. Spence, the sexton, and the gravedigger, who may have been a man named Andrew Jackson Davis, neither of whom would technically count as mourners. Somewhat ironically, Spence (1824-1899), who lived for many years in the catacomb under the parish house, with his dog “sailor,”is buried not at Westminster but in Greenmount Cemetery, with his parents and his wife.(6) (He had married Mary Ann Kelly Spence in 1852, and it was presumably after her death in 1878 that he moved into the catacombs.)

What was Poe wearing in his coffin? Another question without a simple answer. It was customary at the time for an adult male to be buried in either formal clothing or a nightshirt. Family tradition holds that Neilson Poe provided one of his old suits and Dr. Moran that he was buried in a black suit, with a vest, white cravat and a collar, all cobbled together by resident students. Without arguing the source, then, we shall assume that he was buried in a formal suit. (I will note that there is a photograph circulating on the Internet that claims to show Poe in his coffin, but is almost certainly a modern fake.) A detail that no one seems to have mentioned is whether or not he was wearing his mustache when he was buried, or if, perhaps, he had shaved it off as he had done in Philadelphia several months earlier. The final daguerreotypes of him, taken in Richmond, show him having again grown the mustache, but that is our last record.(7)

Edgar was entombed in the Western Burial Ground of the First Presbyterian Church of Maryland, at Fayette and Greene Streets, in his grandfather's lot. At the time, there was no church or other building on the site unless one counts the various mausoleums. He was buried without a tombstone, although one account says that two pine boards were left to mark the spot (Snodgrass, “Edgar A. Poe's death and Burial, 1855). This may seem disrespectful, but there were already three occupants of the lot, Edgar's grandparents and his brother Henry, none of whom had tombstones. And when Mrs. Clemm died in 1871, she would be buried in the same lot, also without a tombstone. Enough people apparently came looking for Poe's grave that George Spence eventually grew tired of directing them, and supposedly put there, at the head, a small sandstone marker bearing the number “80.” (According to Spence, that marker, having served its purpose, was sold in 1875 to a relic collector for 50 cents or $1.)

So, now we have Poe laid to his final rest — well not quite final, and yet again not without more controversy. Almost immediately, as Poe's obituary was printed and reprinted across the country, rumors began to circulate that he had been buried without due respect and even that his remains were in the basement under the church that had been erected in 1851. (This last point, although untrue, is not as absurd as it might sound since the church and parish house are built on top of what was the existing cemetery, and there are graves and vaults in what would technically be the basement, although it is traditionally called the catacombs.)

The matter really picked up steam on August 15, 1854, when the Missouri Daily Republican (in St. Louis, MO), published “Sketch of Summer Travel” by W. H. H. (we have only the initials). The sketch is based on a letter from a man bearing the name Senor Don Key, which should probably have served to have any claims dismissed as merely bad humor. The account records a trip to Baltimore and while there a request to see the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, upon which he was told that the poet had died in an asylum and been buried in potter's field. Neither of these statements, of course, are true. He died, as we have already noted, in a hospital which would about 1857 become Church Home and Infirmary and later Church Home and Hospital. (In in 1854 the building was apparently unoccupied.) Furthermore, he had been buried near the likes of James McHenry, after whom Fort McHenry is named, several of the first mayors of Baltimore, and right next to the grave of the Rev. Patrick Allison (1740-1802), the first pastor of the church, a chaplain to the Continental Congress and a personal friend of George Washington, as had been Poe's grandfather, David Poe. It was surrounded by a sturdy brick wall and featured a lovely main gate designed by Maximillian Godefroy (1765-1848), a French-born architect who had designed a number of prominent structures in Baltimore including the iconic battle monument on North Calvert Street. Although it would suffer some degree of neglect in later years, this cemetery was hardly a “potter's field.”

Thus was the fuse lit. People who were interested in Poe's writings, and were actively witnessing the very public controversy over Griswold's depiction of the author, were outraged at another perceived slight to the cherished memory of one who had suffered so much in life — and residents of Baltimore were outraged to have the reputation of the city tarnished by claims of having shown such a level of disrespect. In June of 1855, almost a year later, a man named Henry F. Cook wrote from Baltimore to the Waverley Magazine of Boston — we can already see how widespread the controversy had become — explaining how the church had been built over the cemetery, but assuring readers that Poe “rests in this beautiful cemetery, and here the pilgrim to the tomb of genius may repose in the shadow of the church and contemplate with pleasure upon the works of that intellect whose earthly tenement lies mouldering beneath his feet.” He also admitted, however, that “no suitable memorial designates the place of his burial” and he “has not a marble slab to tell where rests his dust.”

Also stirred by the claims was Dr. Joseph Evans Snodgrass, who had attended Poe's funeral, and wrote the first of what would be two articles on “Edgar A. Poe's Death and Burial” (Women's Temperance Paper, about June 1855).

In 1856 the controversy was resurrected when the Cosmopolitan Art Journal of New York, probably the editor, Orville James Victor, added a new twist, raising concerns that Poe's remains could “at any time . . . be dug up and removed to where they will never be recognized” and vowing that “the people of America ought to testify to their appreciation of his genius and their gratitude for the credit which he has given to our literature by taking the charge into their own hands.” Characterizing Poe as “weak and sinful, miserable and tempted in his life,” the article urged readers to “pity while we condemn” and asking “Who will be the first to move in this pleasant work?”Three more articles in the same journal would appear in 1857, proposing moving Poe's remains to Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. Similar pleas appeared in the New York Times (October 1, 1856) and the Home Journal (October 18, 1856).

In spite of protests to the contrary, such claims persisted, sometimes embellished to say that Poe's remains were “lying under heaps of rubbish beneath a church” persisted. Someone who had visited Poe's aged mother-in-law in 1860 repeated the story, and Mrs. Clemm promptly wrote to Neilson Poe to ask if it was true. Neilson, presumably stung by accusations of neglecting his cousin in death, had spread the information that he was planning a tombstone to be erected over the grave of his poor, neglected cousin. The proposed Latin inscription (translated as “Here at last he is happy!”) was printed as early as November 1858 (James Wood Davidson, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Russell's Magazine) as if it had been completed and installed. When it became clear that no such stone was present on the grave, the explanation was offered that the stone had been carved but was destroyed when the train that ran past the monument yard went off the tracks and crashed through the area, destroying the stone. While the tracks for the Northern Central Railroad did run right by the yard, which makes sense for delivering and moving such heavy monuments, there is no record in newspapers of this particular accident, and no explanation for why the damage was not covered by some responsible party and a new stone made to replace it. The story about the train was first published by Eugene L. Didier (“The Grave of Poe”) in Appleton's Magazine for January 27, 1872. The same story would be told again by Thomas Dimmock (1830-1909) in Century Magazine for June 1895 (“Notes on Poe”) as if it was entirely new information. His claim to have visited Poe's grave and been told about the stone being in preparation, then later explained as having been destroyed by a train accident, would put the events closer to 1860 or 1863. By that time, it would hardly have mattered. The original momentum of the movement was possibly slowed by the idea that the Poe family was going to act, but then even more interrupted by the national focus on the American Civil War.

When the war ended in May 1865, the country was ready, even eager, to return to normal and to resume things that had necessarily been put aside during the conflict. In Baltimore, there was unfinished business regarding Poe's grave, and that was the main topic of discussion when the Teacher's Association of Baltimore City met for its monthly meeting on October 7, 1865 (by timing or coincidence the anniversary of Poe's death). The meeting was held at the Western Female High School, which overlooked the cemetery and Poe's unmarked grave. A committee was formed to plan for a suitable monument, and to raise funds for it to be erected. The first event to launch the effort was a night of literary entertainment, held on the evening of November 10, 1865 at the school. Admission was 50 cents for each ticket. Through similar events and other fundraising efforts, accumulating the necessary money was slow. By 1872, only $627.55 had been raised, about half of what was projected as necessary. Convinced that they could increase that amount to reach the sum of $1,000, the committee hired architect George A. Frederick, who had recently designed the Baltimore City Hall, to propose what the monument should look like and how it was to be constructed. The result was considered appropriately “simple, chaste and dignified,” but was also several hundred dollars over the original estimate and even a little more when the idea of a medallion portrait of Poe was added to the design.

At this point, the intentions of the committee were not made fully public, and a competing plan for a monument was announced led by George William Childs (1829-1894), a prominent Philadelphia publisher of the Public Ledger. (Working as a young man as a bookstore clerk in Philadelphia in 1843 and 1844, he may have actually met Poe personally, although this possibility is not clearly documented.) Initially, some accused him of merely seeking publicity, but when the committee contacted him, he agreed to provide the promised money. Although the precise sum is somewhat in dispute, it was apparently about $650. With subsequent donations of $100 and $152, and some additional fundraising efforts, the necessary funds, approximately $1,400, were finally in place and the project moved forward.

More complications arose when it was determined that there were problems fitting the monument in the family lot, encroached by the Rev. Allison's grave and the Pearson/Buchanan vault. It was also considered undesirable to have the new monument hidden behind the church. Consequently, a lot at the front corner was reclaimed, or seized, from the family of Alexander Fridge. (There is some dispute as to whether or not bodies had to be removed to a nearby vault to free up that corner.) There was also some question about whether or not the body of Maria Clemm should also be moved, but she had already been disturbed in situating the monument in the first place, and the continued union of this maternal figure and the nephew who had been more a son than a son-in-law was seen by the committee as appropriate and just, and so it was done.

Here, we have yet another controversy, although one that was not really brought up until many years later. The controversy was whether or not in exhuming the body from the Poe family lot, they had indeed moved Edgar's body. I will not go into great detail in the matter other than to say that the man who supervised Poe's body had also buried him 25 years before, and Neilson Poe, who had been present for the original funeral, was also involved, so that the idea that the wrong body was moved seems utterly without foundation.

Marble was constructed by Hugh Sisson, from marble most likely quarried from his Beaver Dam quarry in Cockeysville, probably across the road from what is now the Beaver Dam Swim Club. Although it is sometimes stated, or at least implied, that the monument was made entirely of Italian marble, this appears to have been true only for the medallion portrait, which plausibly required a higher grade of stone. The medallion was carved by Frederick Volck (1833-1891), based on the portrait of Poe by Oscar Haling.

The new monument was dedicated with much fanfare on November 17, 1875. The ceremonial program began in the Western Female High School, then moved to the cemetery for the unveiling of the monument. Although many well know poets had responded with letters of appreciation, only Walt Whitman was actually present and only as an observer. (As a young man, Whitman had met Poe briefly at the offices of the Broadway Journal.) It was all reported in some detail in long articles in many newspapers, from the Baltimore Sun and the New York Tribune, to the Courier and Journal of Louisville, Kentucy, and indeed across the country. All of the publicity resulted in renewed attention focused on Poe, and generally in the form of a more favorable advocacy for his genius and forgiveness for whatever may have been his personal failings. Although standalone editions of his poems continued to be issued, the standard 4-volume edition of his writings, originally edited by Griswold, had ceased to be published in 1871, with the death of Mrs. Clemm. W. J. Widdleton, who had acquired the rights from Redfield in 1860 and issued annual copies of the sets, replaced Griswold's memoir with one by John Henry Ingram. Although dated 1876 on the title and copyright pages, it was presumably available for purchase at the dedication of the monument. Later in 1876, the same set was revised again, adding a section detailing the history of the monument. In this form it continued to be printed for almost another decade, until it was supplanted by expanded 6-volume and 10-volume editions.

Let us now look at the monument, and follow some of its subsequent history. The 6 foot square base is granite, hollow in the middle to accommodate the bodies of Poe and Mrs. Clemm. The marble monument is essentially a short obelisk, a tapered shaft sitting on top of this base, rising 80 inches to the peak and surmounted by an elaborate cap with carved lyres, a reference to Poe's poem “Israfel” (the angel Israfel “whose “To the memory of Edgar Allan Poe, eternally dear to the hearts of his French friends, this small tribute to his genius is dedicated.”heart strings are a lute”) and laurel leaves (“To thee belong the laurels, best bard”). Each face of the main shaft has a raised area suitable for inscription, and Poe's name and dates of birth and death are cared on the back panel, although the birth date incorrectly gives the date as January 20, 1809 instead of January 19. In the center of the front panel was attached the medallion portrait of Poe, and his full name was prominently engraved on the bottom of this section. The side panels remained blank for many decades. They now bear the names and dates for Maria Clemm and Virginia Poe. At one time, it was intended that the monument would have at the very top a raven carved in marble, but this idea was abandoned, probably as expensive and prone to damage.

Initially, the monument merely sat on a slight mound of earth, covered by grass. By 1893, the cemetery had sadly fallen into a neglected condition, which was much noted, especially by Baltimore businessman, Orrin C. Painter, who took it upon himself to rectify the problem. There was no direct access near the monument until 1912, when Painter hired German-born architect Otto G. Simonson (1862-1922) to design the gates that are now present near that corner. (As an interesting side note, Simonson died in Church Home and Hospital after a short illness.) The cost was $500 and the gates were dedicated for Poe's birthday. (The iron work may have been executed by the Baltimore firm of G. Krugg and Son, who did a major renovation of the main gates in 1916.) At this time, there was merely a dirt path that ran from the gates in front of the monument, and small bushes were added. Sometime in the early 1930s, the area around the monument was excavated to form a walkway and it was paved with flagstones. Because making the walkway level required excavation that slightly went below the base, small standing flagstones were placed around the base to keep the dirt from eroding. This flagstone walkway remained in place until about 1980, when it was replaced by the current brick, with embedded lighting. (To resolve the problem of exposing the dirt at the base of the monument, the brick walkway is sloped on one side and with two steps on the other, and a thin layer of concrete has been added to cover the dirt area in the front and the sloped side.

A decade after the dedication, there was an opportunity to add to the memorial the bones of Virginia Clemm Poe, which had been rescued from the Valentine Family vault in the Dutch Reformed Church of Fordham, NY, when a portion of that property was reclaimed for development. The details are, as is so typical of such matters, somewhat clouded in mystery and inconsistency. It appears that about 1882, Dennis Valentine, the sexton at the Fordham Church who had overseen her burial there in 1848, with no Poe family being in New York, contacted William Fearing Gill. Gill had written a biography of Poe in 1878 and was, in 1882, lecturing on Poe and living in New York. Virginia's remains were placed under his charge, with the promise that he would contact the Poe family and have ensure that Virginia was transferred to Baltimore. Unfortunately, Neilson Poe, the head of the Poe family in Baltimore, was ill and died at the beginning of 1884. Consequently, as Gill himself described it, her bones remained in a rosewood casket under his bed until he was able to establish new contact with the family here. Rather than disturb the monument itself, it was decided that she should be buried next to it. The reinterment was performed at 3:00 in the afternoon on January 19, 1885, superintended by John P. Poe and Professor Andrew S. Kerr, of the Western Female High School. The Rev. J. S. B. Hodges, record of St. Paul's Episcopal Church delivered the invocation. Once again, the services of George W. Spence were enlisted. Also present was Sara Sigourney Rice. It must be admitted that Gill was something of a self-promoting showman. (An example of this trait is Gill's claim that he read “The Raven” from an original manuscript by Poe and buried it in the monument.) Although it has been questioned if his testimony can be relied upon, we can only accept it as it has come down to us. (A somewhat more plausible story is that it was Gill who contacted Dennis Valentine and requested the remains, probably when the vault was opened to receive the body of Dennis Valentine's wife. Ostensibly, this action was in keeping with a long expressed wish of the Poe family to have Virginia brought to Baltimore.) In any case, the chain of association seems reasonable, and it is nice to think that the little family of three has been reunited.

In 1894, it was noted that authorities at Westminster Church regularly received letters from all over the world asking for photographs of the grave, and that visitation was increasing every year. A great deal of attention was paid to a comment Tennyson made in an interview, where he said that he should like to visit the United States if only to see Poe's grave. In 1928, it was stated that 13,000 pilgrims visited Poe's grave every year and that every year, the area around it had to be resodded (Springfield Leader, January 18, 1928, p. 5, col. 6). (This annual need is presumably the main reason that the flagstones were installed.) The count may have been based on the names written in a leather-bound register that was kept nearby on a stand. (In 1930, a small brass plaque attached to the monument announced that it was “under the loving care of the Baltimore Press Club.”

Orrin C. Painter's generous donation of the gates that now lead to the monument was not without its own controversy. On May 30, 1913, Mr. Painter had installed two new tombstones, one to mark the grave of David Poe, Edgar's grandfather, and on mark Edgar's original burial place. For reasons that are not clear, possibly confusion of the initial placement of the memorial grave in 1875, these stones were set entirely outside of the Poe family lot. Instead, they were back against the wall in the lot of Septimus Paul Tustin. The error would be discovered by May Garrettson Evans in 1920, and rectified in 1921. This innocent complication may partly have fed the unfounded controversy that the wrong body had been exhumed in 1875. Those stones can still be seen in the back part of the cemetery, behind the church, although neither marker should be thought of as being located with any real precision.

On June 25, 1921, a delegation from the French Literary society and the Alliance Francaise presented an elaborate 3-foot tall brass wreath, which was appended to the North side of the monument. The inscription, in French, translated as “To the memory of Edgar Allan Poe, eternally dear to the hearts of his French friends, this small tribute to his genius is dedicated.” In spite of the sincerity of the tribute, the wreath promptly leeched unsightly green patina all over that side of the white marble, and was removed to a sheet of white marble on the brick wall behind the monument about 1942. At some point, after 1959, it was apparently stolen, leaving only the marble sheet. The wreath has not been seen for many years. Currently, there is a 21-inch by 29-inch piece of pexi-glass marked with a shadowed outline of the wreath where it once hung.

When the Poe Society of Baltimore formed in 1923, there was a long period of tension over the grave between it and the Press Club of Baltimore. Both the Press Club and Westminster Church were frequently irritated by statements made by the Poe Society about the poor condition of the cemetery and the grave. Several attempts were made by the Poe Society to work out some sort of sharing arrangement, but these were regularly rebuffed. When a drunk driver collided with another car and crashed into the wall at Fayette and Greene Street on March 16, 1940, dislodging a table that had been erected by the Press Club. The wall was repaired without restoring the tablet, and the Poe Society subsequently ignored the Press Club as “not having done anything for the last 12 years anyway.” (In 1925, the Press Club had entered into some arrangement by which the First Presbyterian Church was to assume “perpetual responsibility” for the grave, so it had probably been the last 15 years.) Between 1925 and 1934, it was recorded that 79,859 visitors had come to see Poe's grave (Baltimore Sun, April 5, 1934, p. 21, col. 1).

In 1938, the carved marble relief bust of Poe had become badly worn. The Poe Society spent $76 to have a bronze replica made from Volck's original cast, which had been preserved at the Johns Hopkins University. It was affixed to the south facing side of the monument, with the intention of replacing the marble at some point. That switch had happened by 1956, but at some point after that the new medallion was also stolen, and a new bronze one had to be created. The new medallion, the one now visible, is somewhat more impressionistic in style.

After the Christmas service for 1977, the congregation of Westminster Presbyterian Church turned control over the building and grounds to the Westminster Preservation Trust, formed by the University of Maryland School of Law. Consequently, the Poe Society moved its annual lecture to the Wheeler Auditorium of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, main library, the last lecture in Westminster having been presented by Dr. Benjamin F. Fisher, IV. The Preservation Trust launched a major renovation of the building and grounds, and continues to execute its responsibility in maintaining the memorial grave.

[[Footnotes]]

* From “At Poe's Grave” by William Winter.

1. Various books deal with the subject of Poe's death, each with its own virtues and flaws. Three particularly useful examples are:

• Gaylin, David F., The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe: Nevermore in Baltimore. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2024. (Wisely and modestly admitting that a final solution probably cannot be absolutely proven, this book provides a detailed account of many of the facts surrounding Poe's death that can be documented. It also gives a useful summary of many of the various theories that have been offered over the years. In general and perhaps somewhat ironically, it asserts that much of the mystery surrounding Poe's death has been built up by those who have been claiming to shed light on that event, stretching back to as early as 1860.)
• Powell, Michael A., Too Much Moran: Respecting the Death of Edgar Poe, Eugene, OR: Pacific Rim University Press, 2009.
• Walsh, John Evangelist, Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. (Although it claims to “definitively untangle more than a century of speculation” about Poe’s death, this book is little more than a rehashing of the usual information. After rebuking others for speculation, Mr. Walsh proceeds to unleash a wild flurry of his own, boldly stating, in the near absence of any actual evidence, that Poe was attacked by two supposed brothers of Sarah Elmira Royster. Poe, as has been long accepted, had become engaged in Richmond to his childhood sweetheart, then a widow. It is also accepted that her family was not pleased with the proposed union. Mr. Walsh suggests that these brothers followed Poe to Baltimore and forced him to drink so that his pledge of temperance would appear to have been broken and the engagement called off. He further speculates that John R. Thompson invented the “clever” theory of cooping to protect these men. Overall, this book is an interesting and entertaining read, but rather dubious as scholarship.)

My own position is that the details surrounding Poe's death are so jumbled and tainted with personal agendas that determining the precise cause and circumstances is probably impossible. Barring the discovery of some amazing piece of new and conclusive evidence, it is a fool's errand, even if it may be a fascinating one. Even if one were to hit upon the answer, what authority would be able to evaluate is as the correct one?

2. See W. T. Bandy, “Two Notes on Poe's Death,” Poe Studies, vol. XIV, no. 2, December 1981, p. 32.

3. See John C. French, “The Day of Poe's Burial,” Baltimore Sun, June 3, 1949, p. 14, col. 4.

4. While Dr. Moran's statements usually cannot be trusted, and claims that a large number of people visited Poe's remains appear to be typically unreliable, the idea that he was set out for viewing at the rotunda of the hospital seems to be confirmed by recollections of Rev. W. T. D. Clemm. See “Buried Edgar A. Poe,” Indianapolis News, vol. XXV, no. 132, May 9, 1894, p. 8, col. 3.

5. See Nelson Poe to Mrs. Clemm, October 11, 1849 (in Harrison, Complete Works, 1902, vol. 17: Letters, pp. 400-401. Among the slightly contradictory lists is one by Henry Herring, Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, October 11 1865, p. 4, col. 5, Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, “The Facts of Poe's Death and Burial,” Beadle's Monthly, May 1867, pp. 284, and T. O. Mabbott, “Annals,” Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. I: Poems, 1969, 1:569.

6. See Lynn Roby Meekins, “Poe's Grave in Baltimore,” The Critic (New York, NY), vol. XXXIII, whole no. 854, July-August 1898, pp. 39-45. Although the precise location of his burial is not documented, he is listed in records for Green Mount Cemetery as are his wife and parents.

7. For the final images of Poe, see Michael J. Deas, The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe (1989).

Notes are still being added to this online version.