David Poe, Jr.

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Playbill with Mr. and Mrs. Poe

David Poe, Jr. (born July 18, 1784 in Baltimore , Maryland , † after 1809 ) was an American actor . He was the son of officer David Poe senior and the father of poet Henry Poe and writer Edgar Allan Poe . His wife was Elizabeth Arnold Poe .

Life

David Poe, who actually jurisprudence should study, but opted for the theater and made his debut in 1803 at Charleston Theater. In the following years he played on various stages. But critics gave him bad marks for his representations. The last documents on David Poe's life are from October 1809, when he was fired from his theater company in New York. After 1809 all trace of Poe is lost; The year and place of his death are unknown.

Marriage and offspring

On March 14, 1806, at the age of 21, he married 18-year-old widow and fellow actor Elizabeth Arnold in Richmond , Virginia. Poe had joined the troupe in which his future wife played in 1804 and toured with her.

The marriage to Elizabeth Arnold (presumably) had three children:

  1. Henry (1807–1831), seaman and poet
  2. Edgar (1809-1849), writer
  3. Rosalie (1810–1874), David Poe Jr. Paternity is questioned in the specialist literature, however, because there is evidence that suggests another father.

Soon after Poe left the family, his wife died at the age of only 23/24. The three children (4, 2 and 1 years old) were separated from each other and divided into three different families in two far apart cities: Henry stayed with his grandfather "General Poe" (1742-1816) and his wife Elizabeth (1756 -1835) in Baltimore, Edgar was the childless merchant married couple, John (1779-1834) and Frances (1785-1829) Allan adopted and Rosalie was adopted by the couple with many children Jane and William Mackenzie (1775-1829). Edgar and Rosalie both lived in Richmond at first, but had little contact, the contact between the two brothers was lively.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jeffrey Meyers: Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. P. 30
  2. ↑ Kenneth Silverman: Edgar A. Poe, p. 7: "Nothing is known of where David went, or of what became of him."
  3. ^ Occasionally you can read that David Poe died on December 11, 1811 in Norfolk, Virginia (e.g. on the findagrave page ). This information comes from an early Poe biographer, Susan Archer Talley Weiss, who is considered downright unreliable and whose claims are lacking in sources. See e.g. B. the page The World of Edgar Allan Poe where it says about her: "Nearly everything Weiss wrote about Poe, in fact, is completely uncorroborated, and where her statements can be checked, she is generally wrong, often bizarrely so."
  4. ^ Liliane Weissberg : Edgar Allan Poe. Metzler, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-476-10204-1 , p. 19.
  5. ↑ Peter Ackroyd : Poe: A life cut short. Chatto & Windus, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-7011-6988-6 , p. 9.
  6. ↑ Peter Ackroyd: Poe: A life cut short. P. 11.
  7. ↑ Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Ed.): Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume I: Poems. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1969, p. 520.
  8. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. P. 280f.
  9. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. P. 15f.
  10. ^ Fredrick S. Frank, Anthony Magistrale: The Poe Encyclopedia. P. 216.
personal data
SURNAME Poe, David Jr.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1784
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore , Maryland , United States
DATE OF DEATH after 1809