The portrait of Mary Allan, which currently hangs in the Old Stone House, is a significant work of art purchased by the Poe Museum in 1928. The following recounts the history of this portrait, as well as its subject and the artist.
Mary Allan was the older sister of Edgar Poe’s foster father, John Allan, and the eldest daughter of William and Elizabeth Galt Allan. Mary lived in the Allan Bridgegate home until her death in 1850 (Phillips 99).
Although Mary’s childhood and adulthood remain mysteries, we do have an interesting correspondence between a descendent of hers and the Poe Museum. ...
collections
Poe Museum’s Object of the Month is “A **** Cheat”
Now one of the most valuable books in American literature, this humble volume could have easily ended up in a trash heap or floating down the Hudson River along with several other copies. Ben Hardin, Jr. (1784-1852), the first owner of this first edition of Poe’s third book Poems, scrawled abusive language on the end pages. Ben Hardin, Jr. was a Kentucky lawyer who had likely received the book from his son John Pendleton Hardin (1810-1842, Class of 1832, resigned 1832), one of Poe’s fellow cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point. John Hardin would have been one of the 131 ...
One Woman’s Determination Brought the Poe Museum Its July Object of the Month
Every object in the Poe Museum tells a story. Each artifact or piece of ephemera helps us interpret the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s life and influence. The July Object of the Month is no exception. The Cornwell Daguerreotype is a distinctly arresting image of Poe taken at a low point in the author’s life, four days after a suicide attempt. His fiancée Sarah Helen Whitman, who owned the original, which she named the "Ultima Thule" Daguerreotype, pronounced it "wonderful" and told Poe's biographer John H. Ingram that it had been taken "after a wild distracted night . . . and all the stormy ...
Important Sculpture Unveiled at Poe Museum
Last Thursday, the Poe Museum unveiled its most recent major acquisition, the plaster model for Virginia's first life-sized statue of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Rudy's sculpture now on display at the Virginia Capitol.
Retired physician Dr. George Edward Barksdale commissioned this statue for the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond in 1956 because the Commonwealth of Virginia did not have any life-sized statues honoring the author. From this plaster model, a bronze cast was made at a cost of $9,500. After Dr. Barksdale donated the statue to the Commonwealth of Virginia, it was sent to a ...