Text: John Grier Varner, “Chapter 01,” Sarah Helen Whitman, Seeress of Providence, dissertation, 1940, pp. 1-20 (This material is protected by copyright)

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In the middle of the 19th century there was a quiet little drawing, down on Twentieth Street in New York, “a sort of fragrant and delicious ‘clovernook’ in the heart of a noisy city”, where Alice and Phoebe Cary were accustomed to draw about them some of the most distinguished literary and art circles of the city. The Carys were themselves popular writers whose chief bid for renown rested upon a sentimental prose-work called Clovernook, But toward the middle of the century, these ladies had also followed the popular religious trend of an inquisitive age, and joining forces with those who had failed to see error in the “Rochester Rappings”, had become enthusiastic Spiritualistic mediums.(1) Subsequently, therefore, their home came to be a gathering place for both the literary minded and the spiritually curious. Often the Cary lights were softened to encourage a more willing cooperation on the part of timid spirits, and adventurous ladies assembled to peek recklessly into “that dimly discovered country from which so many travellers were beginning to return.”

On one occasion in 1856 a company of authors and poets had been invited to the Carys’ to meet Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, a veiled and mysteriously romantic lady of Providence, whose success as a Spiritualist [page 2:] and whose ruptured engagement to Edgar Poe had added zest to her literary reputation. Whitman sat beneath a picture of Fanny Osgood, while opposite hung portraits of Poe and his hostile biographer, Rufus Griswold.(1) Fannie Osgood was now in “spirit-land”, having died of a racking cough; Poe had passed on into “the great unknown” after three sad days of drunken delirium in Baltimore; and Griswold, concealed with numerous wraps to protect himself from the ravages of a disease which was shortly to and his life, occupied a position of such obscurity in the room that Mrs. Whitman was unaware of his presence.(2) The relations of Poe and Mrs. Osgood with that group now assembled beneath, their pictures had been strange, misunderstood, and unfortunate; and their anxious shadows must have hovered curiously about the gathering. Fanny Osgood had apparently helped to precipitate the broken romance of Alice Cary and her faithless lover, Griswold, and she had also played one of the most important secondary roles in the romance of Sarah Whitman and Edgar Poe, Rufus Griswold himself had maliciously interfered in the lives of both Mrs. Whitman and Edgar Poe, and his relations with Alice Cary had been nothing short of tragic. Only a year later, Alice Cary was to go to the bedside of this man who had “deceived” her and there to watch with him day after day, and week after week [page 3:] as his life ebbed essay; and Rufus Griswold, when death finally came to and his suffering, left Alice Cary his bed, bedding, bedroom furniture, his gold watch, and his pictures.(1)

Mrs. Whitman had often wondered what had happened to those portraits which she now found hanging in the drawing roan of Alice and Phoebe Cary; and as she sat beneath them, her thoughts turned towards those spirits which she felt hovered about then, Dominating the scene as the had dominated in life was the portrait of Poe, and the conversation of the little group turned naturally toward those “dark and melancholy eyes” and toward that “tortured soul” which had gone to the “far off countries”. Poe had by now become a popular revenant among Spiritualists, and Sarah Whitman, particularly, felt a strong affinity with the soul of this strange poet. Later in the evening the conversation of the group drifted into the subject of the possible occupation of those who had ceased to dwell upon this earth, for among Spiritualists it was the belief that souls were occupied in that mysterious Limbo to much the same way in which they had been previously employed, and idleness could not be thought of even in an occult land.

“And what life do you aspire to?” asked Alice Cary of Mrs. Whitman, who though playful in her [page 4:] answer, none the less believed confidently in the power of those on this earth to see into spiritual regions.

“I wish to live in a haunted castle like those evoked by Mrs. Radcliffe, with echoing corridors, and a north tower which has not been explored in the memory of man — a moat and a drawbridge, and a bower window, and troubadours and wandering minstrels to beguile the melancholy tine during my knight's absence in the Holy Land.”

“Good,” said Alice, “and I should like to be your dairy maid, and look after your cows.”

“I engage you in this capacity,” Mrs. Whitman replied, “and feel confident that my cows will live in clover and that the milking songs of my dairymaid will be the sweetest in all the land.”(1)

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Spirits of old feudal lords such as those evoked by Mrs. Radcliffe did perhaps haunt the blood and certainly the imagination of Sarah Helen Whitman. At an early age a relative had charmed her with legends of reckless and adventurous ancestors;(2) and her genealogical proclivities having thus been encouraged, she built up a family tree, the roots of which were grounded in medieval Ireland. She had little other than a few historical facts, and her kinsman's stories to rely [page 5:] upon, but she had great confidence in her own human instincts in ferreting out ancestral skeletons, and thus she came to believe as implicitly in her own discoveries as she did in those made at the herald's office by Sir Bernard Burke himself.(1)

Sarah Whitman was the second child of Nicholas and Anna Marsh Power of Providence, Rhode Island. since the first of her paternal forefathers had migrated to America from Ireland, she found among her ancestors, warriors who had come stalking into England with the Conqueror and there remained as court parasites until, following the fair Prince John into Ireland, they received castles with “drawbridge, bowers, and troubadours”.(2) She liked to look upon Roger le Poer as the patriarch of the Irish family of Power; Roger le Poer was a beardless youth, fair and tall, who rode with John de Conroy into Ulster and helped to lop the arms and heads from ignominious Irishmen for the greater glory of God, the Pope, and Henry II. Included in her clan was Arnold le Poer, Seneschal of Kilkenny Castle, a gentleman. who, besides causing a disastrous civil war in 1327 by indiscreetly referring to Maurice of Desmond as a rhymer, later interposed at the ultimate sacrifice of his liberty and life to save the “noble, Dame Alice Kyteller, whose horrible potions and wicked incantations had [page 6:] brought about the first ecclesiastical trial for witch craft ever instituted in the Irish kingdom. One notes with interest that Alice Kyteller had been accused of practicing mystic arts on her fourth husband, Sir John le Poer, who had thereby suffered a terrible emaciation.(1) Mrs. Whitman boasted of the daring and independence of her forefathers, and among the skeletons in the Poer closet which she particularly cherished was a female descendant of Baron Nicholas le Poer, a woman who had shown great bravery and prowess in defending the seagirt castle of Don Isle during the Cromwellian ravage of 1642.(2) The tradition. of this “ghostly lady” haunting at twilight the mouldering moss-covered “vine of a castle which became her funeral pyre is the subject of Mrs. Whitman's poem, “Don Isle”, written in 1864.(3) From this branch of the Poer family the lady Blessington of Byronic fame traced her ancestry, and from this same line, in an effort to find a more scientific reason for their mutual tastes, feelings, and habits of thought, with the encouragement of the poet himself, made numerous attempts to trace the family of Poe.(4) In playful doggerel she once wrote to Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith:

As trustworthy records of a genealogical Irish background of the American family of Power, Mrs. Whitman's references are not to be relied upon with too much assurance; but so records of stories which from childhood charmed the imagination of one who ever loved Mrs. Radcliffe's haunted castles with their echoing corridors and unexplored north towers, of one who throughout her life possessed the same reckless, adventurous spirit as those knights and minstrels of old Ireland, these references assume some significance and charm.

There is a little more certainty concerning Mrs. Whitman's ancestors in the American branch of the Poer family.(2) Nicholas Power, the father of Sarah Helen Whitman, was a lineal descendant of that baron of Don Isle who suffered Cromwell's vengeance,(3) and among the American descendants, one sees that same spirit of careless independence and adventure which characterized the Irish progenitors. The first of her American paternal [page 8:] forefathers was that Nicholas Power who, having escaped Ireland during the rebellion of 1641, fled to Surinam and from thence to Rhode Island where he joined forces with Roger William and helped to establish the first government which claimed no authority over the conscience.(1) This Nicholas Power settled in Providence with his wife lane, and, although he was perhaps a Roman Catholic, we are told that he was “worthy of his fraternity with the new Baptists, preaching the gospel of liberty in the wilderness”.(2) He was once summoned with Gorton, Greene, Waterman, and others to the General Council of Massachusetts for adhering to his claim of rights of immunity from all religious dictation;(3) and Sarah Whitman in later years never ceased to sense a feeling of great pride at the mention of this ancestor who had dared persecution for the sake of liberty of thought and conscience.

There was a direct succession of Nicholas-Powers in Providence from the time of the first who had left the Old World for greater freedom. But perhaps worth mentioning at this time is the Captain Nicholas Power who was killed fighting King Phillip at Great Swamp in 1675, for he had married Rebecca Rhodes and thus meted two of the original families of the Providence Plantations. A direct descendant of this family was Sarah Whitman's grandfather. Captain Nicholas Power, in whose home the poet spent the early part of her childhood.(4) [page 9:]

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At the close of the eighteenth century Captain Nicholas Power was living with his wife, three daughters, and a son in a house that sat along the side of the bill overlooking the wharves that fringed the Providence River, The house contained a quaint old dining room opening by a fantastic door to a little lawn which was shaded by big mulberry and cherry trees; and there was a separate white building, holding the children's bath and playrooms, which terminated an enclosure on the south. Near this little white building Rebecca Power had a garden which she herself could plant; and there was a gardener who, having traveled all over the world, taught her of the birds, flowers, and trees of distant countries, facts which she later retold to her niece, Sarah. The garden was enormous; it covered an entire square and was divided by terraces where there were all kinds of fruits as well as flowers. From these things of nature Rebecca Power learned deep lessons, for she did not have many books to read other than the Spectator and Fordyce's Sermons, although she always admitted that these books were powerful teachers even for a young child, and that she read and re-read them until they became a part of her mind. There was however other food for thought in the Power home, for at the foot of Mrs. Power's bed there hung always those samplers [page 10:] which she had embroidered as a child of ten. The lines in the samplers had been composed by Ella Aiken, a kinswoman who had been educated in England and who knew both Latin and Greek. To the Power children these quotations were “as the tables of stone to the patriarchs of old”. Some of them were as follows: “Brave deeds and spotless virtue have rewards that shall overcome the grave”; “Give first to God the flower of thy youth”; “Take for thy guide the blessed words of truth”; and “Adorn thyself with grace; prize wisdom more than all the pearls upon the Indian shore”.(1)

Captain Nicholas Pacer had prized wisdom, and he had prospered. His grandfather had increased the real estate holdings left by his ancestors, and had built the wharves, warehouses, and distilleries on the land adjacent to Power street; and although his father had lost much of his holdings during his escapades in Surinam, Captain Nicholas had managed to regain some family wealth and prestige.(2) At the age of twenty-one he had married Rebecca Cory, and entered into business with his brother-in-law, Joseph Brown. Between these two there existed more than a brother's fondness.(3) Furthermore, the connection with the Browns was a fortunate one. They were a wealthy family who by 1760 were operating no less than eighty-four sloops, schooners, and brigantines, engaged in a business which [page 11:] had to a great extent been built up by Nicholas Power's grandfather.(1) Consequently, their clippers coming from the far seas were often seen sailing into the great salt cove loaded with merchandise for the warehouses along Cheapside. Many years later, Sarah Whitman, addressing a poem to a friend, spoke with pride of the maritime trade of her ancestors, and the business which they brought to Providence.

To Mrs. S. S. C. C.

In 1769 the firm of Power and Brown imported from London a telescope to be used in the observation [page 12:] of the transit of Venus Although this instrument was owned by both partners, it was kept in Captain Power's house, where the old man no doubt later demonstrated its marvels to his young grand-daughter Sarah, who throughout her life was fascinated by the science of the stars. But the business of Power and Brown was cordage,(1) and this business prospered The old rope walk on the brow of the hill overlooking India Point, and the spermaceti works on the shore below were owned and carried on by this firm. When the war came on, they had a contract with the government for supplying the navy with cordage, and Nicholas Power was appointed to assist Captain Esek Hopkins in the building of the first American Navy. Then in 1775, when the British were threatening Newport, the little city of Providence hastened to prepare fortifications, and Nicholas Power was directed to superintend their construction; this work he did, drawing upon the town treasury to defray the expense, and in case there was a deficiency supplying the money from his own purse.(2) During the war Nicholas Power gathered his family in a place secure from British invasion and there organizing a corp of volunteers, he led then into Rhode Island while the British were in possession and succeeded in conveying all of the stock from the island. From that time he was called Captain. [page 13:]

But above all Captain Power prized wisdom. In all of his schemer he was united with Joseph Brown; and as their plans prospered, they used their increasing fortunes wisely, aiding the poor and providing instruction for uneducated youth. Sometimes when Captain Power found an indigent young man who had learned no trade, he would offer a loan to establish him in business and to be employed until this youth had capital of his own. Also, he and Joseph Brown kept an evening school in the home of the latter at their mutual expense.(1) Some years later when Rhode Island College had become definitely established in Providence, Captain Power and Joseph Brown were among those called upon to assist in the construction of the “College Edifice”.(2) This auspicious building which stood at the top of the hill was referred to proudly by President Manning as “an elegant brick building, four stories high:; but haughty rivals to the north could not resist an opportunity to sneer, and the Boston Gazette for July 27, 1772, remarked that the corporation had built in Providence “a college near as large as Babel; sufficient to contain four times the number of students that ever have or ever will oblige the tutors of that popular university with the opportunity of educating them or instructing them.”(3) And then when the Baptists of Providence came to need more spaces for those who were distressed of conscience to worship in, Captain Power was called upon to arrange a lottery, according to the [page 14:] custom of the time, for the raising of money for this edifice.(1) The Lord seems to have favored this system of obtaining the needed funds, for in 1775 the First Baptist Meeting House stood, eighty feet square, with a two hundred foot tower originally intended for Gibb's St. Martins-in-the-Fields. In the steeple was a bell, imported from London, and on the bell were inscribed words which would forever remind the thrifty inhabitants of the liberal precepts held. by the founders of their city.

The great bell was rung three times daily, and on Sundays it called the inhabitants over. the marshes and across the hills to worship in the Baptist faith. But Nicholas Power and the city fathers had other plans for the church than merely that of a place of worship or a Gileed for the conscience stricken. They had labored hard to bring Rhode Island College to their city; and notwithstanding the sneers of Boston rivals they expected in time to have a sufficient number of graduates for a goodly commencement. They had not severed their educational ideas front their religious faith; therefore, when in 1775 the new Baptist Meeting House is dedicated, midway between the battlefields of Lexington and Bunker Hill, over its doors appeared the words, “For the public worship of Almighty God, and also for holding [page 15:] commencement in”.(1)

One cannot overestimate the importance of Mrs. Whitman's grandfather in the annals of the Power family. In the intellectual atmosphere of his home, and in his zeal for political, religious, and intellectual freedom is to be found the germ of a similar enthusiasm which always characterized his grand-daughter; and the desire of Captain Power to increase educational facilities must be regarded as significant in the development of the intellectual life of his community.

The college commencement came to be a great festival in Captain Power's time, and it was a festivity in which all participated. “The Episcopalians had their Christmas holidays; the Congregationalists feasted and fasted according to old Bay state laws; Quakers had their quarterly meetings; and the Baptists had their annual convention. But commencement had no denominational limitations; everyone had commencement.” It is said that the Baptists held their heads a little higher because one of their number wore a cocked hat, but generally all religious and political distinctions were laid aside, and everyone joined in an entire week of mental and physical festivity. It was a time when country cousins returned calls and visits, and the stereotyped invitation was “come to see at commencement”. And they came! The public stage from Boston [page 16:] was loaded, and old Captain Gardner's bi-weekly packet sailed in from Newport with a full cargo of human freight. All could not enjoy the advantage of a higher education; but all could enjoy commencement. The stable yards of the Golden Bull Inn and the Montgomery Tavern were filled with hundreds of square topped chaises, and by Tuesday the streets and alleys were crowded with people. “Bands played and the welkin rang” with such spirited tunes as “Washington's March” and “Hail Columbia”. On the first night the throngs were treated with an illumination of the “College Edifice”, eight candles being lighted in each window. Then on Tuesday, after the rising sun had been saluted by the roar of the two brass pieces which Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga, a military procession, led by a fife and drummer, filed through the streets to the college where they met to escort the literati to the First Baptist Meeting House.

It was with a little more than the usual interest that Captain Power joined the commencement procession in 1789 as it marched down College Hill to the church, for upon this day the college was to confer the degree of Bachelor of Arts upon his only son, Nicholas 6th, a boy of 18 of whom the old Captain was proud.(1) The procession was a rowdy one, indeed sufficiently so to warrant the appointment of a sheriff to assist the Corporation in all future commencements. Much confusion [page 17:] was caused by the booths dispensing liquor on the meeting house lot, and it was thought well to recommend to the Baptist society that they thereafter take effectual mans to prevent the erection of such booths.(1) But the assembly arrived; and after a long prayer had been said, they took their seats to indulge in the literary feasts which accompanied all of the old commencements. There were the usual classical orations, music, and a forensic debate on the question of whether or not mankind had been benefitted by Columbus’ remarkable discovery. The program ended with a funeral oration by the class orator, young Nicholas Power, who delivered a discourse on the death of Levi Hayes, “once a member of the class which graduated.”(2)

The Power family were proud; and they were exceptionally proud of young Nicholas. His classical education was a finished one, and be later hold both the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts.(3) An exquisite miniature of him, executed by the American artist Malbone, shows a debonair, adventurous youth with blue eyes and blond complexion; he was sometimes referred to as “Nicholas of the beautiful face”.(4) It was said of him that “he was the handsomest, most polished, and gifted young man of his day, and that the brave knight of chivalry seemed revived in his courageous bearing, his manners., and his conversation”. It is therefore [page 18:] not strange that with the advent of this Nicholas there began “many wild traditions where history has been ignored and fancy given loose rein”.(1) But the sisters of young Nicholas were also famed for their pulchritude and were once spoken of as the most beautiful women in Rhode Island. They too were painted by Malbone.(2) There were Sarah and Mary Ann and Rebecca, who as a child loved the birds, the flowers, and the stories which the gardener told of foreign worlds.. The Powers were a “beautiful” family and they were an uncommonly proud family. They were aware that their ancestors had been among the first to settle in the city, and that with an occasional exception they had used their means wisely and had carried well. In fact they felt that they were of noble birth. Rebecca especially believed that there was an abundant evidence of “blood” in the uncommon beauty of her sister Sarah, the gallantry and refinement of her brother, the remarkable chivalry of her father, and in all of those distinguished manners and traits which she found. in her father's relatives and family.(3) To Rebecca these were significant signs of noble stock, and in future years she spent some time with her niece Sarah Helen in tracing the lives of the family and searching for romantic facts which made up the story of their noble, adventurous, and rebellious Irish ancestry. [page 19:]

Pride of family was inherent with the Powers. It is therefore not a matter of great surprise when one learns that they were not pleased with the handsome Nicholas, when on May 18, 1798, he was married to Anna Marsh, daughter of Susanna and Daniel Marsh of Kingston. They felt that Nicholas was an exceptional young men, and they felt that his marriage was not just what such an exceptional young man deserved.(1) It is true that Anna Marsh could look with some pride to her ancestors, for the family of Daniel Marsh as respected. Again, her mother was related in some way to the celebrated old prophetess and theurgist, Jemimah Wilkinson, and she was also a kinsman of Benedict Arnold.(2) But these very maternal kinsmen might have cast a shadow, for the deeds of Benedict Arnold still rankled in patriotic hearts, and the peculiar mental twists and religious impositions of Aunt Jemimah Wilkinson were a curious portion of local history.(3) Furthermore, one wonders if a rumor of blood taints might not have cast a darker shadow, for evidences of insanity are to be found in the Marsh family.(4) At any rate, Rebecca Power later recorded that there was something serious involved in this marriage, and that it was painful to all who loved Nicholas.(5)

It is quite probable that the young couple sailed soon for the Caro1inas, for in 1800 they were with Mrs. Power's relatives at Bath, North Carolina, [page 20:] where their first child, Rebecca Matild, was born.(1) Yet, it was not characteristic of Captain Power to have cut off any relative because of a disagreeable marriage, for Captain Power lived “not for himself but for his whole family”, and he no doubt yearned for his only son.(2) His daughter Sarah had married David R. Williams, a young Southerner attending Rhode Island College, who carried her off to his plantation at Charleston, soon after, another daughter, Rebecca, while visiting her sister, had married a wealthy widower at Peedee, who was “small, dark and deaf”, and much older than she.(3) A third daughter, Mary Ana, had married William Blodget of Providence. So by 1800 Captain Power had opened his doors to his son, and Nicholas returned, bringing his family to his father's home at the corner of South Main and Transit Streets. There can be little doubt that the Captain also supplied the capital for his son's enterprises, for in 1800 young Nicholas formed a co-partnership with William Blodget, and they built the first brick store in the city, operating on Cheapside near the First Baptist Meeting House. Their commodities ranged from cotton and calico to gin, rum, and molasses; and the white sailed vessels moving up the harbor often unloaded foreign wares at their doors.(4) “Nicholas of the beautiful face” had now become a respectable merchant of Providence, and there was some restoration of their family pride.