Text: Anonymous, “[Death of Annabel Lee Leland], Daily Free Democrat (Milwaukee, WI), vol. 1, no. 152, March 14, 1851, p. 2, col. 2

DIED — On Monday, evening, Feb. 24, of inflammation of the brain, after an illness of 38 hours, ANNABEL LEE, only daughter of Mary J. and T. C. Leland, aged 9 months and 2 weeks. — N. Y. Tribune.

Connected with the above announcement, is a piece of beautiful history: This Annabel Lee Leland, was the daughter of parents who had always cherished the warmest affection for the late gifted and unfortunate Edgar A. Poe. Their house had been a refuge for him when all others were shut against him, and in the bitterest hours of trial and suffering, he had found in them warm and steady friends. Often had they taken him, in a state of inebriation, from the streets, in winter, when be must have perished from the cold, and provided him shelter, comfort, and sympathy. So in their company was spent some of the most calm and cheerful hours of the latter part of his life.

This attachment between them was the result of a sincere affection he had cherished for the Mary Leland mentioned in the announcement, in her youth. He bad known her when she was but twelve years old, a fair haired, bright-eyed, light-hearted girl — and he was a romantic inspired boy of seventeen. But when he left school, they were separated for many years; he heard s she was dangerously sick, and afterward supposed she was I dead.

But the bright dreams inspired by her, remained with him, and he has told us, that her angel form often rose up before him, in his degradation, and darkness, and ruin. — It was like a beam of light that gilded the gloom of his existence, and shed its rays through the thick clouds that rolled about his head. In one of those moments, when, frenzied by intoxication, the love-light of his early days appeared before him — he thought how it was untimely quenched, and left him in the darkness alone, friendless, helpless and hopeless, he seized and wrote those wild sweet strains of “Annabel” and “the cloud that came out by night’ [[”]] —

Shortly afterward, chance threw him in the way of her he bad supposed to be dead. She was the wife of T. C. Leland mentioned above. But she cherished a sympathy for the miserable child of genius; her husband befriended, and afterwards loved him for his talents, his warm heart, and the dazzling attractions of his conversation. The only child, born shortly before his death, of these friends of’ the poet, out of tender respect and admiration of him, was named after the verses referred to. And here we see that this child is dead. The cold sod too, is above the form of him whose life was clouded by suffering, and whose sun went out in darkness. Lightly may it rest on his bosom, is the prayer of those who loved him, and lasting will 1 be their remembrance of the proud and gifted one.