Text: Anonymous, “The Ancestry of Johnson and Poe,” Athenaeum (London, UK), whole no. 4151, May 18, 1907, p. 602

[page 602:]

THE ANCESTRY OF JOHNSON AND POE.

The Reades of Blackwood Hill, Staffordshire: a Record of their Descendants. With a Full Account of Dr. Johnson's Ancestry his Kinsfolk and Family Connexions. By Aleyn Lyell Reade. (Privately printed for the Author.) — Mr. Reade is a careful and accurate genealogist, whose work is well worthy of study by those who can claim no direct interest in the families whose histories he elaborately chronicles. When we call to mind the loose manner in which pedigrees are often compiled, it is a pleasure to encounter a book in which the statements, so far as we can test them, are based not on conjecture, but on facts for which conclusive evidence is furnished.

The Reades of Blackwood Hill and their kindred were yeomen. None of them seems to have borne arms, though it appears that some members of the family have in recent times assumed those of namesakes with whom, so far as is at present known, they had no ties of cousinship. The chief value of Mr. Reade's work, however, for those who are not members of the family, is that it demonstrates that the igrees of those who have been below the rank of gentry are in many cases capable of proof, and are assuredly as worthy of investigation as those of persons of higher position, which have long attracted attention. We owe far more than is generally admitted to the zeal in genealogical matters which has been shown by Americans during the last half century, and the surprise of American antiquaries is great that of the inexhaustible store of record evidence at our dis so little use has been made. A President of the New England Historic Genealogical Society pointed out several years ago that genealogy was by no means a study for recording mere “artificial and aristocratic distinctions,” but that its chief interest consisted in the investigation of “those laws by which moral or intellectual traits or physical characteristics of organization are handed down from generation to generation.” Such we know to have been the opinion of Bishop Stubbs, who himself came of a race of Yorkshire yeomen, and whose last work (which we fear was never completed) related to the pedigrees of families which had flourished for ages in the neighbourhood of Knaresborough. In the British Isles races have become so blended that there are very few (perhaps not one) of what are called our oldest families that have not been crossed by peasant blood; and proof is furnished by Mr. Reade that there are labouring men at the present day who are legitimately descend from King Edward III.

It has not been demonstrated as yet that what we call genius is hereditary. But, not to criticize the ancestral line of Charlemagne, there are families among our contemporaries which point in that direction. However that may be, it is certain that good working ability is not infrequently handed down from generation to generation. The only question that arises here is in which line it comes. People are sometimes apt to forget that where there has been no intermarriage of cousins our [column 2:] ancestors are doubled by each succeeding generation.

The second part of the volume, relating to the ancestors, family connexions, and friends of Dr. Johnson, will probably be of far more interest to the public than the earlier section, though it is not so to ourselves. The same elaborate care has been bestowed; indeed, if any contrast can be drawn, there seems to be even more regard for minuteness of detail. Though no striking discoveries have been made, the history furnishes clues which stimulate speculation in various directions.

The Family of Poë or Poe. By Sir Edmund T. Bewley. (Dublin, printed for the Author.) — “Genealogical problems,” says the author of this work, “have a great attraction for the genealogist,” but other readers in this instance are more likely to be attracted by the promise on the lengthy title-page of “a discussion of the true ancestry of Edgar Allan Poe.” Nevertheless, it happens that the investigation of the American poet's ancestry is less interesting than the attempt to elucidate the pedigree of the Cromwellian Poes. The history of Dr. Leonard Poe, the founder of the family, is full of romantic possibilities, and one would have been glad if more information had been furnished concerning the physician and some of his immediate descendants. Sir Edmund, in his compilation of the facts connected with Leonard Poe's career, positively denies that the man ever was physician to Queen Elizabeth; yet a mural tablet in Petersham Church, to the memory of Sir Thomas Jenner, is said to describe Jenner's wife Anne as daughter and heiress of James Poe, son of Leonard Poe, Doctor of Physicke and physician to Queen Elizabeth, King James, and King Charles I. The fact that the doctor had a letter of protection from the Queen's Council, which saved him from being — jo at the instigation of the College of Physicians, renders the testimony of the tablet and of tradition extremely probable. It would have afforded further proof of Poe's pecuniary position had Sir Edmund quoted the fact that, in addition to the nominal fine of five marks, to which the doctor submitted, he also deposited as security for his good behaviour one hundred pounds, a very large sum for those days.

Our author, who is by no means impeccable, proceeds to accuse James, Leonard Poe's son, of having made “a bad blunder” in giving legal testimony that his father died on March 27th, and was interred on the 31st of that month, 1631, since the doctor's will was certified to have been proved on March 25th, two days before the date of his death. Surely the son is less likely to have made the blunder than some transcriber of documents, or an official at the Probate Registry or at the College of Arms. At any rate Dr. Poe is not likely to have died in February, as Sir Edmund elsewhere suggests, if he were not buried before the end of March.

The section of the work devoted to the Cromwellian Poes, William, Thomas, and Anthony, is full of romance, and an extremely interesting volume might be made out of William Poe's adventurous career. It is somewhat difficult to decide whether he was. more sinned against or more a sinner. Something might have been discovered about the Joseph Poe whose name and date of death only appear in this work. He is evidently the Joseph Poe referred to in a print, in the British Museum, as Cornet Joseph Poe, who was tried for highway robbery, and executed on October 20th, 1725. He had refused to confess his lineage, or name [column 3:] his parents, “as they were persons of great credit and worth,” and stated that he had had a gentleman's education. An elegy written upon him intimates that there was a mystery about his crime; it concludes: —

If this Joseph were the person mentioned in 1683, in the will of Thomas Poe as his grandson, he must have been somewhat old as a cornet in 1725.

Readers anticipating that the present work will settle the truth about Edgar Allan Poe's ancestry will probably be disappointed. Sir Edmund Bewley has evidently spared no pains to arrive at the truth, but the impartial critic will need further evidence before accepting his conclusions. Beyond carrying back the poet's known lineage for another generation, he has little more than conjectures to offer. He is severe on some of Poe's biographers for the romance they have imported into the tale of the poet's forbears, yet is doubtless right in deeming his fiancée, Mrs. Whitman, responsible for the picturesque pedigree provided. As Poe's English biographer, whom Sir Edmund misquotes, merely cites the lady's words, the indictment is scarcely fair, especially as it has to be acknowledged further on that the same writer “has taken a sensible view of Poe's ancestry.” The work under notice does not carry the records of the poet's lineage back earlier than the eighteenth century, and that is all his biographer claimed to do.

A great point is made of Edgar Poe's family not being derivable from the Cromwellian Poes, as no member of the latter race is known to Sir Edmund as having borne the baptismal name of David, whilst three of the poet's ancestors did so. As two of these Davids doubtless derived their cognomen from the McBrides, the maternal side, and only one from the Powells, who are suggested as the poet's male ancestors, the evidence goes for little. By a similar hypothesis it might be conjectured that these Powells of Dring, the poet's suggested ancestors, must have had consanguinity with the Cromwellian Poes, since they had so many names in common, as William, Thomas, James, John, &c.; but such theories are too unscientific for serious discussion. Surely it is illogical to insist that the Poes could not have come from Germany at an early date and have settled in British dominions. Individuals bearing the name of Poe and its variants have been traced for some centuries abroad, and to deem these identities “merely an accidental coincidence “ does not dispose of the likelihood. There is as much probability of some of these Poes having descended from German Poes as from Welsh Ap Howells, and still greater probability that the Poes of Dring were from the same stock as the Poés of Riverston.

An immense amount of research must have been expended in the compilation of this volume, and a considerable portion of the contents is more interesting to nontechnical readers than genealogical works generally are.