Item Details | The Museum Collection | Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Poe's Parents in the Boston Gazette for 1806-1807

ID #:	786
Creator:	Boston Gazette
Date:	September 1, 1806-August 24, 1807
Format:	Bound Newspapers
Dimensions:
Source:	Museum Purchase
Collection:	Poe Foundation, Inc.
Publisher:	Boston Gazette
Place of Publication:	Boston
Publish Date:	1806-1807

Announcement of Mrs. Poe's Benefit

This is announcement for an upcoming benefit to be held on behalf of Eliza Poe. The following photograph provides more informaiton about the benefit.

Notice that a similar benefit will also be held for Mrs. Usher. Mr. and Mrs. Usher were close friends of the Poes, and they are undoubtedly the source for the name Usher used in Poe's tale "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Mrs. Poe's Benefit

This is an ad for a benefit to be held on behalf of Eliza Poe. Each actor was entitled to at least one benefit a year. The profits from that night's performance would be give to that needy actor. Given Mrs. Poe's popularity, this benefit was likely as success.

Ad for Distress'd Mother, March 30, 1807

David Poe appears as Pylades in Distress'd Mother while Eliza Poe appears the same night as Princess Lodoiska in the play Princess Lodoiska or The Captive Princess.

Boston Debut of David and Eliza Poe, October 13, 1806

Though Eliza Poe had made her stage debut in Boston in 1796, she had not performed there since then. This would have been her first Boston appearance in ten years and his husband's Boston debut.

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Description:

Edgar Allan Poe's parents, the actors David Poe, Jr. (1784-1810?) and Eliza Poe (1787-1811) were married in April 1806 in Richmond. In October 1806, they appeared in on the stage in Boston, where theire first son, William Henry Leonard Poe, was born on January 30, 1807. Their second son, Edgar Poe, was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. Notices of Poe's parents' performances appear several times in the Boston Gazette. The Poe Museum owns Volumes 21 and 22, which run from September 1, 1806 until August 24, 1807.

The Poe Museum purchased the collection from an unidentified source for $18 in 1946.

The Museum Collection

Poe's Parents in the Boston Gazette for 1806-1807

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