Off to see Edgar Allan Poe

Some of  Edgar Allan Poe's work was required reading when I went to school. Because of his hard life and mysterious death, anything about him always caught my curiosity. He's buried at the now called Westminster Hall and Burying Ground along with his wife Virginia, his mother-in-law and aunt Maria, his brother and grandfather .

This was a popular burial place for many important and influential merchants, politicians, statesmen, and dozens of veterans (officers and soldiers) of the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812 who were citizens of the burgeoning and soon-to-be, the third largest city in America.

Poe and his family were relocated to front of the cemetery after a
 "Pennies for Poe" campaign in 1875 by a local school teacher to get Poe a more appropriate monument.

In 1852, a church was erected over top of the graveyard. Brick pillars straddle gravestones and burial vaults creating a kind of catacomb. 

Gravesites are squeezed into many  now odd locations around the graveyard.

It's well worth the time to visit. I wish I was visiting during a time when they were giving tours of the church itself.

 

To see more photo's of this visit, click here.