Text: Anonymous, “Mrs. Maria Clemm,” New York Tribune (New York, NY), vol. XXX, no. 9,323, February 22, 1871, p. 5, col. 3

[page 5, column 3, continued:]

Among the deaths published in the Baltimore Sun of the 17th inst., was that of Mrs. Maria Clemm, the aunt, mother-in-law and never failing friend of Edgar A. Poe. Mrs. Clemm was born in Baltimore, on the 12th of March, 1790. Her family was one of the oldest and most distinguished in Maryland. Her father, David Poe, was quartermaster general of the old Maryland line during the revolution, and the intimate friend of Washington. Lafayette and the leading men of the time. In 1836, while editing The Southern Literary Messenger, Edgar A. Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a lovely and beautiful girl, whose memory he embalmed in “The Raven.” She was the “lost Lenore” of that extraordinary poem. From the time of Poe's marriage to her daughter, Mrs. Clemm adopted him as her son, and never had son a more devoted mother. To have won and kept the love of such a woman through all the vicissitudes of such a career as Edgar Poe's shows more forcibly than words can tell that the innate goodness of the poet was not lost even in the midst of wasted genius, unparalleled misfortunes and utter misery. When he was ill, and his wife dying, it was a touching sight to see this “tireless minister to genius,” poorly clad, going from office to office in New York, with a poem, a story, or a critique of Poe's to sell. To her Poe wrote the sonnet “To my Mother,” in which he testifies to her care and devotion by saying that she had been “more than mother” to him. After the poet's death, on the 7th of October, 1849, Mrs. Clemm resided with different friends in New York and Virginia, until five or six years since, when she was received into the Church Home in Baltimore, a charitable institution, under the management of the Episcopal Church, and there she died on the 16th inst., in the 81st year of her age. Poe died in the same building, which was then the Maryland Hospital. Her funeral took place on Friday, the 17th. At her own request, she was buried by the side of her “darling Eddie,” In Westminster churchyard, corner of Fayette and Green streets, Baltimore. Besides the four pall-bearers, there were present about a dozen ladies and two gentlemen, admirers of Poe and friends of Mrs. Clemm. Among the ladies was Miss Rosalie Poe, the sister of the poet.