Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 08.djvu/371

 POE

POE

university, Cleveland, Ohio, 1852-53; of mathe- matics in the state normal school, Albany, N.Y., 1853-55, and of physics and engineering at the Normal school, Trenton, N.J., 1857-59; of physi- cal science in the Brooklyn Polytechnic institute, 1863-69; of physics and engineering at Cooper Union, New York city, 1869-79, and became director of the Cooper Union night school in 1879. He was chief engineer of the water board of Bergen, N.J., and was appointed commissioner to supervise the construction of electrical sub- ways in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was twice married; first on Dec. 17, 1855, to Delia M., daughter of Thomas Bussey of Troy, N.Y., and secondly, July 3 J, 1861, to Helen M. Bussey, her sister. The honorary degree of A.M. was conferred on him by Hamilton college in 1854 and that of M.D. by Long Island College hospital. He edited Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine (1870-86), and is the author of: TJie Blowpipe, a Guide to its Use in the Determination of Salts and Minerals (1858); A Translation of Jannettaz' s '• Guide to the Deter- mination of Rocks" (1877); The Star Finder or Planisphere with a Movable Horizon (1878); The Aerinoid, and How to Use it (1880).

POE, Edgar Allan, author, was born in Boston, Mass., Jan. 19, 1809; son of David and Elizabeth (Arnold) Poe. His grandfather, David Poe, fought in the Revolutionary and 1812 wars, and his father, who had been educated for the law, had become an actor, married an actress, and was playing in Boston, when Edgar Allan, his second son, was born. His parents died when lie was but two years old, and John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, adopted him. He at- tended school at Stoke Newington, England, and a private school in Richmond, Va., and entered

the Univer- sity of Vir- ginia, Feb, 14, 1826. He re- mained there but one year, worked in Mr. Allan's count- ing-room a months, and in 1827 went to Bos- ton, where, at the age of eighteen, he l)ublished his Jirst volume of poems,

wliich he later attempted to destroy. "When his money was gone, he en- listed in the army. May 6, 1828, as Edgar A.

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Perry. He was advanced from private to the rank of sergeant-major in less than nine months, and when Mr. Allan learned where he was he furnished a substitute and had Poe appointed to the U. S. Military academy, July 1, 1830. Poe found the life distasteful to him, and Mr. Allan refusing to allow him to resign, he suc- ceeded in being cashiered in 1831. In 1829 he had published a second edition of his poems under a new title, and in 1831 he published a third volume, dedicated to his fellow students. Mr. Allan's anger at the Military Academy dis- grace caused Poe to leave his home and go to Baltimore, where he took up literature as a pro- fession, turning his attention to prose. His first story, published in the Saturday Visitor in 1833, won him the $100 prize offered by that paper. He became editor of the Southern Literary Mes- senger of Richmond in 1835, and here he began to show the peculiar, mystical side of his writ- ings, and his ability and fearlessness as a critic. He became editor of Graham's Magazine in 1836 and in the same year was married to his young cousin, Virginia Clemm. He was made associate editor of the " Gentleman's Magazine in 1839, and in 1841, when this was merged into Graham's Magazine, became editor. It was at this time that he published his theories in regard to cryp- tography, and demonstrated them by solving a hundred miscellaneous specimens that were sent to him by his contributors. This same year he won a hundred dollar prize with his story " The Gold-Bug."' In 1842 he left Graham's Magazine and in 1844 became editorial assistant on the Evening Mirror, then conducted by N. P. Willis, and in its columns in 1845 first published " The Raven," In 1846, after an unsuccessful attempt to conduct the Broadway Journal, he withdrew to Fordham, N. Y., where on Jan, 30, 1847, his wife died, and he became a complete recluse, Poe's works include: Tamer-lane and Other Poems (1827); Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829); Poems (1831); A Manuscript Found in a Bottle (Saturday Visitor, 1833); Berenice (South- ern Literary Messenger, 1834); The Fall of the House of Usher (Gentleman's Magazine, 1840); The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840); The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Gentleman's Magazine, 1841); The Gold-Bug (Dollar Magazine, 1843); The Raven (1845); The Literati of New Yo7-k(Godey's Lady's Book, 1846); Eureka, a Prose Poem (1847); Ulalume, The Bells aud Annabel Lee, written after 1847. Rufus W. Griswold prepared a memoir of Poe which he published in 1880. Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman wrote "Edgar A. Poe and his Critics " (1859); William Fearing Gill (q.v.) refuted certain statements of Griswold in " The Life of Edgar Allan Poe " (1876), and George E. Woodbury wrote " Edgar Allan Poe," for the