This Black History Month, the Poe Museum seeks to provide resources on the life and literature of Black Americans in the 19th century. The lives of Black Americans directly shaped Poe’s upbringing in Richmond and influenced his writing. Their stories are an essential aspect of a holistic understanding of Poe’s life. Click on the links below to find out more information.
Slavery in the Allan Home
Growing up in Richmond in the early 19th century, Poe was acutely aware of the presence of slavery within his home and city. While Poe never enslaved anyone himself, he was raised in a household which profited off the institution of slavery. Poe grew up in a household where Judith, Scipio, and others enslaved by John Allan lived and labored. He visited the plantation, inherited by his foster father, where over a hundred men, women, and children were inherited, bought, and sold. In an 1827 letter, Poe described the power dynamics within the Allan household stating “You suffer me to be subjected to the whims & caprice, not only of your white family, but the complete authority of the blacks”[1]
Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia, Heinz Family Collection, Eyre Crowe (1861)
For more information on the recorded lives of enslaved individuals we recommend checking out North American Slave Narratives.
19th century Black Richmonders
Poe was likely aware of several notable Black Richmonders throughout his 17 years living in Richmond, Virginia, including Gilbert Hunt. Hunt and Poe were connected to America’s deadliest tragedy in the early 19th century: The Richmond Theater Fire. Poe’s mother, Eliza Poe, a renowned singer and actress would have performed at the Richmond theater the night of the fire had tuberculosis not taken her life three weeks earlier. On December 26th, 1811, after the first act of the second play of that evening, a lit chandelier caught a stage curtain on fire, resulting in a mass fire that took the lives of over 70 individuals, a majority of whom were women. Gilbert Hunt, an enslaved blacksmith, heard the fire bells ring and rushed to the scene to aid the victims. Alongside Dr. James McCaw and a borrowed ladder, Hunt saved over a dozen women from the fire. His recollection of the fire was recorded in Gilbert Hunt, the City Blacksmith by Philip Barrett in 1859. After the fire, Hunt continued to labor as a blacksmith and, in 1823, saved even more Richmonders from a fire at the state penitentiary. By 1829, he had purchased his freedom and briefly immigrated to Liberia, a colony formed by the American Colonization Society. He also served as a deacon of the First African Baptist Church and helped form the Union Burial Ground Society.
Gilbert Hunt, Smith & Vannerson (1860). Credit to The Virginia Historical Society.
During the last year of Poe’s life in 1849, he may have read the story of Henry Box Brown. Brown, born into slavery in Louisa County, labored in a tobacco factory in Richmond managed by his enslaver’s son. Throughout his time in Richmond, Brown married and had three children. He attended the First African Baptist Church around the same time Gilbert Hunt was a deacon there. In 1848, Brown’s wife Nancy was sold and separated from Brown, which led him to seek freedom by any means necessary. After he plotted with a few other Richmond men and the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, Brown made the daring decision to ship himself north in a confined wooden box measuring 3ft by 2ft by 2.5 ft. On March 23rd, 1849, Brown was sealed shut and endured a harrowing 26-hour journey—part of which was spent upside down. Brown continued to champion for abolition for the remainder of his life, writing songs and lecturing around the North including many of the cities Poe was familiar with—Philadelphia and Providence. There is no doubt that Poe would have read of his endeavors in the local and national papers. After moving to England, Brown’s focus turned from abolition to mesmerism—a form a spiritualism Poe notoriously detested.
After Poe’s death, several other notable men and women continued to influence Richmond’s landscape, especially its literary sphere. Daniel Webster Davis was a poet and teacher in Richmond, Virginia. He founded the Virginia Teachers’ Reading Circle, the first organization in Virginia dedicated to African American educators. He also worked as an editor of The Young Men’s Friend and Social Drifts. Davis is arguably best known for his collections of poems, Idle Moments, Containing Emancipation and Other Poems (1895) and ‘Weh Down Souf and Other Poems (1897). To learn more about Davis’s advocacy for voting rights, notable positions, and other written publications click here. John Mitchell Jr. was born in Richmond, Virginia during the American Civil War. He attended school alongside Davis at the Richmond Colored Normal School. After a brief career in teaching, Mitchell went on to become an editor of the Richmond Planet. Throughout his time at the Richmond Planet (eventually located at the Swan Tavern where Edgar Allan Poe spent his final days in Richmond), Mitchell significantly increased readership. Through Mitchell’s leadership, the Richmond Planet became a source of print advocacy of anti-lynching and anti-Jim Crow laws. “Mr. Jno. Mitchell, Jr., has done more in the way of newspaper work in exposition and denunciation of lynching through the Planet than any other newspaper editor.” To learn more about Mitchell’s involvement in Richmond’s politics, banking career, and more click the link here.
Race in Poe’s Literature
While Poe lived all throughout the East Coast, his southern upbringing played a crucial role in his literature, particularly influencing his portrayal of race. Scholars of the past century have debated the extent to which Poe’s personal view of race and slavery are embedded in his literature, from his caricatures of black characters to covert portrayals of racism in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “Hop Frog.”
“The Gold-Bug” (1843)
Poe included several Black characters in his literature including Toby in “The Journal of Julius Rodman,” Pompey in “A Predicament” and “How to Write a Blackwood Article” as well as Pompey in “The Man That Was Used Up.” Most famous of Poe’s Black characters is Jupiter in “The Gold-Bug.” Jupiter was formerly enslaved but later manumitted by his enslaver, William Legrand. Jupiter decides to stay with Legrand, due to Legrand’s “instill[ing] his obstinacy into Jupiter,” however it could be argued that Jupiter, in an act of agency over himself, made the decision to stay. Jupiter is depicted as unintelligent, often using racist caricatures of speech. The character of Jupiter may have been inspired by enslaved laborers and free Black individuals Poe interacted with in Richmond. Poe would likely have interacted with Richmond’s free Black population (constituting 10% of the city’s population in 1820). Many of the descriptions of Poe’s Black characters are akin to that of runway advertisements which were advertised in local newspapers.
“And Pompey, my negro! — sweet Pompey! how shall I ever forget thee? I had taken Pompey’s arm. He was three feet in height (I like to be particular) and about seventy, or perhaps eighty, years of age. He had bow-legs and was corpulent. His mouth should not be called small, nor his ears short. His teeth, however, were like pearl, and his large full eyes were deliciously white. Nature had endowed him with no neck, and had placed his ankles (as usual with that race) in the middle of the upper portion of the feet. He was clad with a striking simplicity. His sole garments were a stock of nine inches in height, and a nearly-new drab overcoat which had formerly been in the service of the tall, stately, and illustrious Dr. Moneypenny. It was a good overcoat. It was well cut. It was well made. The coat was nearly new. Pompey held it up out of the dirt with both hands.”
Poe also reviewed several pro-slavery pieces for the Southern Literary Messenger throughout his time working there. Poe praised northern depictions of slavery by Northerners including Joseph Holt Ingram’s The South-west. By a Yankee and Mrs. Anne MacVicar Grant’s Memoirs of an American Lady. In his review of Memoirs of an American Lady, Poe states “Some remarks on slavery, at page 41, will apply with singular accuracy to the present state of things in Virginia.”[2] And goes on to quote a passage within the book “I have no where met with instances of friendship more tender and generous than that which here subsisted between the slaves and their masters and mistresses.” He also praised the works pro-slavery authors such as John L. Carey and Thomas R. Dew. While these reviews were published to reflect the values the Southern Literary Messenger, to some extent they too showcase Poe’s views on race. Throughout his short stories and criticism, Poe showcases a clear interest in power dynamics. From reflecting slave revolts in “Hop Frog” to racial authority over characters like Jupiter —it is clear the hierarchical race structure of the 19th century played a pivotal role in the influence of Poe’s literature.
[1] Edgar Allan Poe to John Allan — March 19, 1827, Poe, Allan, Ellis Papers, 1803-1881. MSC0033/0001-0001.0001. The Valentine, Richmond, Virginia.
[2] Edgar Allan Poe, Critical Notices, Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II, no. 7, July 1836.
Maria Poe Clemm, born March 17th, 1790 in Baltimore, Maryland, was the sister of David Poe Jr. and the aunt of Edgar Allan Poe. At the age of 27, she married merchant William Clemm Jr., as his second wife. Maria became a step-mother to Clemm’s five children and the two later had three children of her own. The youngest, Virginia, married Maria’s nephew, and her cousin, Edgar Allan Poe at the age of 13.
While technically both Poe’s mother-in-law and aunt, Poe viewed Maria as a motherly figure in his life, especially as both his biological and foster mother’s had passed. She considered Poe to be her son, practically adopting him and saying that he was “indeed a son to me & has always been so” (Harrison, XVII, 380).
After moving to Richmond to work at the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe had got word that Neilson Poe, a cousin of the poet, had offered to take in the two women. Poe saw this as a threat to his family and titled Neilson as an enemy. Poe later brought Maria and Virginia to Richmond and took them into his care before and after Poe and Virginia married. The family still struggled financially, even while Poe worked at the Southern Literary Messenger.
Maria appreciated Poe’s effort in trying to keep the family together, despite the appeal of Neilson Poe’s offer and the lack of funds Poe was bringing in as the main source of income for her and her daughter. She is quoted to have said, “it takes nearly all he can make to answer that demand, but poor fellow he is willing to do all in his power for us”.
After Virginia’s death of tuberculosis, Edgar and Maria developed an almost symbiotic bond with one another, depending on each other for love and comfort. He dedicated his poem, “To My Mother” to her, stating that after Virginia died, Maria filled the void in his heart left behind by her passing. To Poe, there was no title as devoted and loving as “mother”, and she was the mother to both him and his beloved wife. In the poem, he proclaims that because she was the mother of Virginia, she was more dear to him than his birth mother was.
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of “Mother,” Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— You who are more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you In setting my Virginia’s spirit free. My mother—my own mother, who died early, Was but the mother of myself; but you Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, And thus are dearer than the mother I knew By that infinity with which my wife Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.
“To My Mother” by Edgar Allan Poe (1849)
Poe died mysteriously and without a definitive cause as to why October 7th, 1849. A day after his funeral, she wrote to her relative Neilson Poe to confirm if Edgar was indeed dead.
“I have heard this moment of the death of my dear son Edgar—I cannot believe it, and have written to you, to try and ascertain the fact and particulars—he has been at the South for the last three months, and was on his way home—the paper states he died in Baltimore yesterday—If it is true God have mercy on me, for he was the last I had to cling to and love, will you write the instant you receive this and relieve this dreadful uncertainty—My mind is prepared to hear all—conceal nothing from me.”
Maria Poe Clemm to Neilson Poe, Fordham, New York. October 9, 1849.
Two days later, Maria received his confirmation and left her family’s cottage in Fordham to live with the Lewises’ in Brooklyn. She stayed there for roughly two weeks until moving in with Nancy “Annie” Locke Richmond, a former love interest of Poe.
Maria lived with the Richmonds for roughly a year and a half. At the beginning of her stay, she was physically sick and mourning the loss of her son. Eventually, with the kindness and the inclusiveness of the Richmonds, she became mentally and physically stable. Annie’s husband, Charles, insisted on taking her horseback riding often, and she even accompanied Annie and her young daughter on a ski trip. She received much condolences and support from Poe’s literary friends, including Charles Dickens and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but also witnessed and exclaimed at Poe’s rival Rufus Griswold’s defamation of Poe, who wrote in his obituary that . She wrote to Griswold and other authors that Poe was a great man, poet, and author, trying her best to keep Poe’s name good and just.
After the cold Massachusetts air set in, the sixty-one year old fled the harsh and cold conditions and lived from house to house, generosity to generosity, for roughly twelve years. In her first years of lonesome, she visited the Richmonds again, along with Poe’s old loves to seek generosity from them, including Marie Louise Shew and Sarah Helen Whitman. Whitman occasionally sent Maria money, but nothing more for fear of overstepping her own personal boundary.
Ten years after Poe’s death, Maria managed to find work and room in Alexandria, Virginia. She lived with lawyer Reuben Johnson in exchange for teaching his three children. While living here, she got severely sick, and the doctor ordered her not to use her eyes in any way. It was here on 70th birthday that she wrote, “Oh how sad and lonely I am, and with what rapture, I will hail the time when I will go to meet all my loved ones” (Maria Clemm to Sarah Helen Whitman, Alexandria, March 17, 1860).
At this time, Maria received an invitation to stay in Putnam, Ohio from the Robins family in exchange for information about Poe for Sallie E. Robins biography about him. The stay lasted two years, and it did not go as Maria had hoped. The family planned on staying in Europe for a couple years, inviting Maria along. The trip never happened, however, as Sallie was declared insane and was forced into an asylum before the trip, leaving Maria without a stable place to stay. She exclaimed that this stay was as bad as the last one, quoting, “How I wish I could get a home in some pleasant family” (Caroline Ticknor, Poe’s Helen, New York, 1916).
As the Civil War raged on, especially in Virginia, she sought refuge in Baltimore where her relative Neilson Poe lived. Originally wanting to stay at the Widows home to live out the rest of her life, she begrudgingly stayed at the Church Home after she could not afford the $150 entrance fee to the Widows home. She kept in touch with Neilson and his family, handing over control of her funeral to him. In some stroke of coincidence or perhaps planning, the Church House was actually the place where Poe died, as it had once been the Washington Medical College which treated Poe in his final days. Here, she spent her final days telling stories and details about her son-in-law and praising him till her last interview, citing him as “elegantly formed, exceedingly graceful” (Delman-Heyward Files, Maryland Historical Society).
Her final request was to be buried next to Poe, and so she was. She died February 16th, 1871, at eighty-one years old. Those who attended her funeral were admirers of Poe and her friends. She wrote to Annie prior to her death, exclaiming that she cannot wait to be with her loved ones again, telling her that the dead are with her still, and have been since they departed the living, and she will join them soon.
Celebrate Women’s History Month by learning of the revolutionary women who founded the Poe Museum and illuminated Poe’s history forevermore.
Mary Gavin Traylor (1890 – 1946)
It is safe to say that the Poe Museum would not exist today if Mary Gavin Traylor had not steered it through the Great Depression as the museum’s board secretary, librarian, curator, tour guide, host, fundraiser, and caretaker from 1928 until 1946. As if that were not impressive enough, she did all of this part-time while maintaining her job writing for the Richmond News Leader and managing its photo archives.
The daughter of Poe collector Robert Gavin Traylor, Mary Gavin Traylor started her journalistic career as a French correspondent in Paris before returning to Richmond to care for her mother while taking over the society column at the local newspaper. The newspaper’s editor, Douglas Southall Freeman, happened to be the president of the Poe Museum and allowed her to work half a day at the paper and the rest of the time at the museum.
Traylor joined the museum’s staff in 1928. When the Great Depression hit, the museum cut back its staff and closed all but one of its buildings to save on the expense of heating them all. Despite these tough times, when she was only allotted one log per day to heat the Old Stone House, Traylor continued to solicit contributions and to make major acquisitions including the candelabra under which Poe wrote “The Bells” and James Carling’s illustrations for “The Raven.” When she had the opportunity to purchase an important daguerreotype of Poe, the board told her that raising the funds would be impossible, but Freeman allowed her to give it a try. Against all odds, she was able to accumulate twenty donations in order to acquire the Poe Museum’s copy of the Ultima Thule daguerreotype, which our guests can see today in the Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building.
Once the museum survived the Depression, World War II arrived, and the museum’s most important treasures had to be shipped to an undisclosed location for safekeeping. But Traylor kept the museum open. At one point, she even curated an exhibit of portraits painted on ice cream spoons. When peace arrived, she helped negotiate the donation of several Poe manuscripts from the grandchildren of Poe’s literary executor Rufus Griswold. Thanks to Traylor’s efforts to build the Poe Museum’s collection, we will never have to resort to displaying ice cream spoon portraits again.
Annie Boyd Jones (d. 1939)
Visitors in the Poe Museum’s early days often recalled meeting the institution’s co-founder Annie Boyd Jones in the Enchanted Garden, where she inevitably quoted the lines from Poe’s poem that formed the basis of the garden’s design.
Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine – A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine…
To One in Paradise, Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
The flamboyant and outgoing Jones was a poet, artist, and patron of the arts who counted among her many artistic friends Mount Rushmore’s sculptor Gutzon Borglum. After her husband rented Richmond’s Old Stone House with the intention of using it as a colonial history museum, she talked him into remaking it into a shrine to Edgar Allan Poe, instead. When Poe collector and researcher James H. Whitty informed her that he had the building materials left over from the demolished office of the Southern Literary Messenger (the very building in which Poe began his career in journalism), she convinced him to let her construct a garden and pergola out of the bricks and to make eleven bookcases from the lumber. In the early days, these bookcases housed the Poe Museum’s collection of rare Poe volumes.
When the museum opened, it consisted only of the Old Stone House and garden, but Jones soon purchased the buildings that we now call the North Building and the Visitor’s Center. After failing to save Poe’s childhood home on Fourteenth Street from destruction, she took the building materials down to her Poe Shrine and had the Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building constructed from them. In doing so, she established the Poe Museum’s footprint for the next century.
Additionally, Jones paid for repairs to the Old Stone House (using materials salvaged from Poe’s homes and place of work) and acquired items for the collection—including Poe’s trunk, which remains a museum highlight. Within a year, the museum was ready for a grand opening on April 26, 1922. In photos taken that day, Jones can be spotted in her huge feather hat, fur coat, and twenty-four karat gold mail handbag. A smile beams across her face. A friend described her as “full of fire and life…” and said she served the best illegal alcohol at her parties. (This was during Prohibition, after all.)
When, over a century later, our guests step into the museum’s Enchanted Garden, they are entering what Jones envisioned as a place enveloped with “an atmosphere that breathes the very spirit of the poet’s life…”
Antoinette Suiter(1924 – 2023)
Not a day goes by when we do not overhear a guest whisper to a friend, “Come here. Take a look at this.” After a few minutes of silence, one of them observes, “He had really small feet.”
That is how countless people respond to their first sight of Edgar Allan Poe’s socks on display in the Poe Museum’s North Building alongside Poe’s waistcoat. These last surviving pieces of Poe’s clothing are a very tangible reminder of the person who once wore them and about the closest one gets to seeing Poe in the flesh. It is not the kind of thing one can experience on a computer or phone.
That is why, on school group tours, our guides use them as teaching aids, asking the students, “What does this waistcoat tell us about Poe? What kind of person do you think would wear something like this? Why would someone wear this?”
Poe’s socks and waistcoat are just two of the artifacts his cousin Elizabeth Herring’s great-great granddaughter Antoinette Suiter donated to the Poe Museum during her many years as supporter and trustee of this institution. While even the casual visitor will see a few of these artifacts on display, they might not appreciate the Poe family lore and advice Suiter has shared with us. These stories, told as only Poe’s closest living relative could have told them, have provided us a closer view of her “Cousin Eddy,” “Cousin Virginia,” and “Aunt Muddie” than we could have found anywhere else.
When not supporting the Poe Museum, Suiter devoted her skills and infectious enthusiasm to the Boy Scouts, the Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Tar River Orchestra and Chorus, the North Carolina Ballet, and Stonewall Manor in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She had a rare gift for spreading her optimism and love of life wherever she went.
Born in 1924, just two years after the Poe Museum opened, Mrs. Suiter passed away on her ninety-ninth birthday. While we may no longer see her strolling the museum’s halls, sharing stories of her Cousin Eddy, we—and everyone else who visits—will benefit from the portraits, documents, and other artifacts she entrusted to the museum.
Click here to see some of the artifacts Antoinette Suiter has donated to the Poe Museum.
The land surrounding the fall line of the James River, now known as Richmond, Virginia, has played a pivotal role in this nation’s history. As the ancestral home of thePowhatan Confederacy, the site of Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech, and an epicenter of the American Civil War, there is no doubting Richmond’s influence over the major events of U.S. history. Several notable American figures called Richmond their home including Chief Justice John Marshall, Maggie Walker, and perhaps most notably, Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe, born Edgar Poe, was born to David and Eliza Poe on January 19th, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s childhood was an unstable one at best. David, Poe’s father, abandoned the family when Edgar was still a baby. When Poe was two years old, Eliza moved her family down to Richmond, Virginia in support of her acting career. By the end of that year Eliza contracted tuberculosis and passed away. At not even three years old, Edgar Poe was orphaned. Thankfully, Frances Valentine Allan, and her husband, John Allan took interest in the young boy and decided to take him into their home as their foster child. Edgar Poe was now Edgar Allan Poe.
The Allans were a well-off, childless couple. Frances was born into the Valentine family, a notable wealthy family of Richmond. John on the other hand, a Scots-man, emigrated to the United States as a teenager to work under his uncle William Galt. While his uncle never provided the liberal education John had envisioned, Allan gained valuable experience as a businessman. As an adult, Allan established his own business with Charles Ellis, aptly named the Ellis & Allan firm. The Richmond-based mercantile business provided Richmonders with various goods including food, clothing, tools, and at times, enslaved individuals.
Growing up in Richmond in the early 19th century, Poe was aware of the presence of slavery within his home and city. Poe grew up in a household where people enslaved by Allan lived and labored. He visited the plantation inherited by his foster father where over a hundred men, women, and children were inherited, bought, and sold. As a young adult in Baltimore, Poe sold Edwin, a man enslaved by his aunt, on her behalf (Matthew Pearl, however, has argued that the document Poe signed freed Edwin while working around Maryland’s strict manumission laws.).[1] When Poe returned to Richmond toward the end of his life, he saw Richmond transform into the second largest slave trading center in the U.S.[2]
While Poe himself never enslaved anyone, he was raised in a household which profited from the institution of race-based slavery. To have a complete understanding of Poe’s life and upbringing in Richmond an understanding of the lives of those individuals enslaved by his foster father is required. Poe and Allan’s lives, like many middle and upper-class individuals in Richmond, were supported through the institution of slavery to some degree. Not only does this ongoing research deepen the historic knowledge of Poe’s life, but it broadens the understanding of slavery in Richmond and the individual histories of the enslaved.
Research on these individuals was collected through tax records, wills, newspaper accounts, deeds, letters, census records, court documents and other valuable databases. While new information has been found, the records of these individuals are still limited. Most sources do not list names, and only supply the number of enslaved individuals within a household. In rarer cases, first names such as Judith, Henry, and Scipio appear. However, these cases provide no information about the forced responsibilities these people performed, their families, or their memories.
This research temporally covers references to individuals enslaved by John Allan from 1811, when Edgar Poe joined the Allan family, to 1834 when John Allan passed. Geographically, this research spans the City of Richmond, located in Henrico County at this time, and Goochland County, focusing on those enslaved in urban domestic households owned by Allan, his Richmond business ventures, and his rural plantation. The lives of those enslaved in urban centers like Richmond differed from those in rural plantations. By the time Poe was a teenager in Richmond, the population of the city consisted of 6,500 free white individuals, 4,300 enslaved individuals, and 1,200 free black individuals.[3] Enslaved individuals laboring in urban domestic households often performed multiple forced duties rather than one specific skill or labor. Additionally, enslaved individuals often slept near the labor they performed, both in outbuildings and within the main house, rather than having separate living quarters.
This paper will provide contextual information of the lives of other individuals enslaved in Richmond to infer what those living on Allan’s properties likely experienced. This paper will be continually updated as more information of the narratives of these individuals is discovered.
13th St. & Main and 14th St. and Tobacco Alley, Richmond City, VA
Edgar Allan Poe called several places home throughout his childhood and adulthood. When he was first taken in by the Allans, the family lived at 13th Street and Main, right above the Ellis & Allan firm. The small home housed not only Frances, John, and Edgar, but also Frances’ sister Nancy, and Judith, a woman enslaved by John Allan. Judith is first recorded in John Allan and Charles Ellis’ papers on January 1st, 1811, a year before Edgar was taken in by the family.
“Jan. 1st, 1811, a negro woman named Judith hired from Master Cheatham for the sum of £25 to be retained clothed as usual under a bond of £50.”[4]
Not much is currently known of Judith’s life, forced responsibilities, or family. She likely labored throughout the home, caring for young Poe, cooking meals in the outdoor kitchen, or smoking meats in the smokehouse.[5] Through the historical record we know she likely stayed with the Allan’s for quite some time. The 1820 census lists only one enslaved individual in the Allan household, a woman of at least 45 years of age.[6] Assuming this individual is in fact Judith, then it follows that she was first enslaved by Allan in her mid-30’s.
Edgar lived at 13th and Main until the age of 6. In 1815 the family moved to England for five years for Allan to expand his business. When those business ventures ultimately failed, the Allans returned home to Richmond and moved into the home of Allan’s business partner Charles Ellis at 2nd and Franklin Street for about six months before relocating to a house on 5th Street, between Marshall and Clay Streets, where they resided until May 1822. The family next moved to a house on the corner of 14th street and Tobacco Alley, where Poe lived from 13-16 years of age (1822-1825). This home was located one block away from the 15th street business district—Richmond’s slave trading district.
The Ellis and Allan Firm
Slave trading, in addition to the industries of flour and coal, was one of Richmond’s main sources of economic development in the early 19th century. While slave trading existed in Richmond prior to the 1830s, during the 1830s-1860s, Richmond became the largest slave trafficking center in Virginia, and the second largest in the country. Enslaved individuals, brought by boat up the James River, were traded in Richmond in hotels, auction houses, and jails which lined Shockoe Bottom from the river to Broad Street.[7] While some individuals were bought by Richmond enslavers, many were traded to deep south plantations. These experiences are best described by the individuals themselves.
“At Fredericksburgh we were transferred from the stage coach to a car, and before dark arrived in Richmond, the chief city of Virginia. At this city we were taken from the cars, and driven through the street to a slave pen, between the railroad depot and the river, kept by a Mr. Goodin. This pen is similar to Williams’ in Washington, except it is somewhat larger; and besides, there were two small houses standing at opposite corners within the yard. These houses are usually found within slave yards, being used as rooms for the examination of human chattels by purchasers before concluding a bargain.”[8]
Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave
The Ellis & Allan firm participated in slave trading in several different capacities. In October 1811, prior to Allan taking in Edgar, Allan participated in the auction of “a Negro man about 28 years of age, and a Negro woman about 26 years of age” as well as a tract of land on the behalf of James Pleasants to settle the debt of Phillip Pleasants.[9] In 1812, the firm, acted as a lender of “542 Acres and the following slaves Andrew Anthony Bob Betsy and child, Lucy and children Sally & Children” to William Dandridge.[10] In 1815, Ellis, acting on the request of Allan, sold Scipio, an enslaved man, for $600, and hired out an unknown number of other enslaved individuals for $50 per person.[11] Enslaved individuals, especially in urban settings, were often hired out to other enslavers or employers who would contractually lease them.
Slaves Awaiting Sale, Richmond, VA, by Eyre Crowe (1861) Heinz Family Collection.
Not only do these sources provide insight into the business’ involvement with slave trading, but they also illuminate the experiences of enslaved individuals in the 19th century. Enslaved individuals were often sold alongside purchasable items such as food, tools, clothes, or land etc. as they were considered goods—items to be bought, leased, sold, invested in, rather than humans with individual agency. While these sources are a glimpse into the economic ventures of slave trading by Ellis & Allan, research is still ongoing to discover the firm’s extent of involvement into the slave trade.
Moldavia, 5th and Main St., Richmond City, VA
1825 was a transformative year for Allan and his slaveholdings. William Galt, Allan’s uncle and one of the wealthiest men in Richmond, passed away, leaving Allan a hefty portion of his fortune. This inheritance propelled Allan’s wealth and status in Richmond. Shortly thereafter, Allan purchased a new home for his family at 5th and Main St. named Moldavia. Moldavia was a physical representation of Allan’s increased wealth, which included a large 2 1/2 story home, icehouse, green house, stables, and servant’s room.[12] Allan’s increased wealth also led to an increase in the number of people enslaved within his home.
Moldavia, 1890. The Poe Museum Collection, 56.
The 1830 Census lists 13 unnamed enslaved individuals in Moldavia in addition to the Allans[13]. Of these 13 individuals, 3 were children under 10 years old (two boys and one girl). These children were only a few years younger than Edgar. Enslaved children often had the forced responsibilities of tasks like carrying buckets of water or drying clothes.[14] It is uncertain whether the individuals enslaved by Allan were part of family units, and whether or not Allan maintained those units. In his uncle’s will, of whom Allan was an executor of, Galt requested that family units of those he enslaved be kept together.[15] Enslaved families were constantly under threat of being sold off and separated, especially during periods of economic hardship.”
Others listed at Moldavia in the 1830 census included 2 young adult men, 4 adult men, and 4 adult women. Again, the names and labors of these individuals are unknown, however, insurance plats and collection items from the Poe Museum’s collection can help piece together their narratives. Within the home, enslaved individuals likely served food, washed and ironed linens, cleaned and heated fireplaces, polished silver, and emptied chamber pots, in addition to other forced responsibilities. Today, many of the objects preserved from Moldavia, such as the Allans’ irons, salt cellars, decanters, and China, represent the forced labor of those who interacted with these objects daily.
Irons from Moldavia, The Poe Museum Collection2020.10.1.a-b.
Outside of the main house, enslaved labor continued in the gardens, basement, icehouse, and stables. An insurance plat in 1829 shows an attached brick wing of Moldavia labeled “Servants Room.” Some, if not all, of those enslaved at Moldavia may have slept here on wooden pallets with wool covers. Privacy for those enslaved at Moldavia would have been rare with little room to keep personal belongings.[16] No material culture belonging to those who labored at Moldavia is preserved today.
In addition to the 13 individuals who were enslaved at Moldavia, it appears Allan also hired a freed man Bellmour (sometimes spelled Belmour) Johnson. Johnson was formerly enslaved by William Galt until his death. Upon the death of Galt, Johnson was manumitted and given forty dollars as stipulated in Galt’s will.[17] Shortly thereafter, it appears Allan hired Johnson as a carriage driver and hustler. Moldavia’s census records indicated no freed males living at Moldavia, so it is likely Johnson lived elsewhere in the city, perhaps in one of the several free black communities in Richmond.[18] In 1831, Allan, amongst many other prominent Richmonders, petitioned for Johnson to remain in the state of Virginia with his unnamed wife and children. In 1806, “An ACT to amend the several laws concerning slaves” was passed by the Virginia General Assembly which stated that any person freed in Virginia must leave the state within 12 months.[19] This legislation was a direct response to several freed black uprisings, including Gabriel’s conspiracy. Allan petitioned on behalf of Johnson, remarking on his character.
“While he has lived with me as a Driver & Hustler his conduct has been excellent; on one occassion his readiness, courage & Sense saved my Family from the most eminent danger in crossing the Warm Spring Mountain, before it was a Turnpike. In a more recent instance my Horses took Fright (with Mrs Allan in the carriage) His great presence of mind again saved his Mistress; probably her life. If any consideration can weigh to allow an emancipated Slave to remain in the State wherein his wife & children Live might I hope that it may be extended to such men as Belmour Johnson”[20]
While it is unknown if Johnson’s petition was successful, it does highlight the difficulties freed men and women experienced after manumission—the threat of having to leave the state where your family and children live, finding housing, and making sufficient wages.
Poe only briefly lived in Moldavia before attending the University of Virginia in 1826. During that time, he would have been intimately acquainted with the functions of enslavement and forced labor in his foster father’s household. In an 1827 letter to Allan, Poe expressed his disdain for Allan’s lack of financial care and empathy. Poe concludes the letter by proclaiming to Allan “You suffer me to be subjected to the whims & caprice, not only of your white family, but the complete authority of the blacks — these grievances I could not submit to.”[21]
Byrd Creek Plantation, Goochland County
In addition to receiving enough inheritance to purchase Moldavia, Allan also inherited from Galt “…three landed estates, named the ‘Byrd,’ lying and being situate in the Counties of Goochland and Fluvanna, on the Byrd Creek, with the slaves, stocks and property of all kinds belonging thereto;”[22] The Byrd plantation, located 50 miles west of Richmond, was around 6,000 acres and reported to be worth $70,000 according to Poe.[23]
According to personal property tax records, Allan initially inherited 92 individuals above the age of 12 in 1826.[24] By 1834, the year of his death, he acquired 110 individuals above 16 years of age, and 10 individuals between 12 and 16 years of age.[25] Distinctions of those above and below 16 years of age were made in tax records because any enslaved individual 16 years of age and above was considered tithable, or a taxable adult, and therefore performing the mental and physical labor expected of enslaved adults.[26]
Personal Property Tax of John Allan, Goochland County, 1834.
One of these individuals at the Byrd plantation was named Henry. On November 8th, 1839, Henry, who was at that point enslaved by Allan’s second wife Louisa G. Allan, was brought to court over the murder of Isham Cheatham[27]. Witnesses claimed Henry murdered Isham Cheatham on October 26th, 1839, on the Byrd plantation. While Henry pleaded not guilty, the jury ultimately found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to hang on December 20th of that year.[28]
In addition to enslaving over a hundred individuals on his own plantation, Allan continued to sell men, women, and children in rural counties as the executor of Galt’s will. Allan advertised the sale of Galt’s enslaved individuals in the Constitutional Whig, stating “Also be sold at the same time and place, all of the negroes attached to said being about 60 in number, among them are four valuable coopers; the balance excellent field hands, including men, women, and children… JOHN ALLAN & WM. GALT} Executors of Wm. Galt dec.”[29]
After Allan’s death, the people he enslaved at Moldavia and The Byrd plantation were inherited by his second wife, Louisa G. Allan. It appears Mrs. Allan sold many individuals after her husband’s death, perhaps to support her and her legitimate children. The fate of these individuals and their descendants today is unknown.
While many facets and intricate details of Poe’s life are closely studied, the totality of his foster father’s slaveholdings in Virginia is yet to be fully understood. The goal of the Poe Museum’s ongoing research is to uncover and publish the historical narratives of Judith, Scipio, Henry, and the hundreds of unnamed individuals enslaved by John Allan to ensure their histories are remembered. This research was conducted by Emma Clark, Education Manager at the Poe Museum, Chris Semtner, Curator at the Poe Museum, and Anna Jones. If you would like to volunteer to aid in this research, please contact Chris Semtner and Emma Clark.
[3] McGraw, M. T. (1987). Richmond Free Blacks and African Colonization, 1816-1832. Journal of American Studies, 21(2), 207–224. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27554832
[4] Allan, John to Charles Ellis. January 1st, 1811. Ellis & Allan Company records, 1795-1889, Library of Congress.
[8] Northup, Solomon. (1853). Twelve Years A Slave. Narrative Of Solomon Northup, A Citizen Of New-York, Kidnapped In Washington City In 1841 And Rescued In 1853, From A Cotton Plantation Near The Red River in Louisiana (pp. 58).
[13] 1830 U.S. Census, Richmond, Henrico, Virginia, United States, Richmond Monroe Ward, Richmond (Independent City), Virginia, United States, pg. 369, M19, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XH5N-QQS
[15] Last Will and Testament of William Galt, 1835. Found in Hervey Allen, “Appendix 03,” Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1926), volume 2, pp. 857-873. https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1921/hva262a3.htm
[16] Dean, Catherine E. (2010). Beds. In Martha B. Katz-Hyman, Kym Rice (Eds.), World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States (pp. 54-57). Takagi, Midori. (2000). Rearing Wolves to our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865, (pp. 39-40).
[17] Last Will and Testament of William Galt, 1835. Found in Hervey Allen, “Appendix 03,” Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1926), volume 2, pp. 857-873. https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1921/hva262a3.htm
[18] McGraw, M. T. (1987). Richmond Free Blacks and African Colonization, 1816-1832. Journal of American Studies, 21(2), 207–224. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27554832
[21] Edgar Allan Poe to John Allan — March 19, 1827, Poe, Allan, Ellis Papers, 1803-1881. MSC0033. The Valentine, Richmond, Virginia.
[22] Last Will and Testament of William Galt, 1835. Found in Hervey Allen, “Appendix 03,” Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1926), volume 2, pp. 857-873. https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1921/hva262a3.htm
