The Sordid History of Edgar Allen Poe’s Grave

 

   After my last issue visiting the 1980s with the death of John Belushi, I wanted to step back to my roots, the Victorian era, and talk about one of the most famous graveyards in Baltimore at Westminster Hall. This 18^th Century church and graveyard used to be the First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore and is the burial site of one of the best authors in American literature, Edgar Allen Poe. He has two burial sites and four headstones, but we’ll get to that.

   Edgar Allen Poe died October 7, 1849. He was found next to a tavern in clothes that was not his own and talking deliriously, as though in an alcoholic stupor. He was then hospitalized and after several days, he perished. By being a lesser-known author at the time of his death, he died as many artists do, poor.  He was then laid to rest behind the church in an unmarked grave. Eventually a man by the name of George W Spence placed a small gravestone carved of sandstone, inscribed with the number 80. After Maria Clemm, Edgar’s mother-in-law, started talking about the lack of upkeep of Edgar’s grave in newspapers, Nielson Poe, Edgar’s cousin, took matters in his own hand.  Nielson contacted a tombstone maker by the name of Hugh Sisson in 1860. A worthy tombstone was made and was getting ready to be transported to the cemetery the following week, until disaster struck. According to a magazine that was published a few years later, Sisson told his story:

    “That tablet was finished and standing in my yard. It was to be erected in the cemetery the following week and would have been but [for] a most extraordinary accident on the Friday or Saturday preceding. My yard adjoins the tracks of the Northern Central Railroad. A freight-train ran off the track, broke down the fence, and did more or less damage to other work; but the only irreparable damage was done to Poe’s tablet. That was smashed to pieces, beyond all power of restoration”

    Only a sketch of the tombstone remains. The inscription place upon it was this: “Hic Tandem Felicis Conduntur Reliquae (translated as “Here, at last, he is happy”). Edgar Allan Poe, Obiit Oct. VII 1849. The reverse side of the stone read “Jam parce sepulto” (translated as “Spare these remains”).

    It would not be until 1875 that another monument would be started. Collections were started under the leadership of Miss Sara Sigourney Rice for this new monument but a goodly chunk of the money with come from a single Poe admirer, a Philadelphia resident by the name of George Childs. George Frederick, the famous architect who designed Baltimore City Hall, started work on the monument shortly after. After it was finished, it was found too big for the original gravesite so it would be placed in the corner of the churchyard. After the exhumation of Edgar Allen Poe as well as his wife, Virginia Clemm Poe, and his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, they were reburied, and the monument was put in its place. The dedication of the monument took place on November 17, 1875 and was attended by Nelson Poe and Walt Whitman. Letters from H. W. Longfellow, John G. Whittier, William C. Bryant and Alfred Tennyson were read, telling of Poe’s genius as a poet and author

    In 1913, a final tombstone would be installed at the original gravesite for the famous author. The benefactor of this was Orrin C. Painter. First the tombstone was placed well outside the Poe family plot, and then it was moved to a more reasonable location. But in the words of the Edgar Allen Poe Society in Baltimore, “Perhaps in part due to this confusion, but mostly because people simply love a good mystery, a strange rumor has persisted that the memorial committee failed to exhume Poe’s remains, instead moving those of some other poor soul. The improbability of this notion is obvious when one realizes that the exhumation in 1875 was supervised by George W. Spence, the man who buried Poe in 1849, and Poe’s cousin Neilson Poe, who attended the original funeral”. In the end, people are drawn to the original gravesite of Poe, with its realistic raven chiseled at the top of the stone. That’s where pennies and flowers are placed, and as for one, the Poe Toaster, will leave on Poe’s birthday, three red roses and a bottle of cognac.

    If you are visiting Baltimore, there are many things to see there. But if you can have only one day, visit the Edgar Allen Poe House Museum as well as the churchyard where the famous author is interred, which is in walking distance.