Mrs. Marguerite St. Leon Loud

(Born: April 17, 1800? - Died: November 4, 1889)

Minor American poet. Marguerite St. Leon Barstow was born in Wysox, PA. In 1824, she married John Loud, a prominent Philadelphia manufacturer of pianos. Poe was to have edited her only collection of poetry, Wayside Flowers (1851), but he died in Baltimore on his way to Philadelphia. The book, Wayside Flowers (Boston, 1851), was instead edited by Park Benjamin. She died in Kenyon, Minnesota, and is buried there. Her tombstone in Kenyon Cemetery gives the year of her birth as 1812, but that would mean that she was only 12 when she married, if the 1824 date is accurate. Although several sources give the year of her marriage as 1824, one source says it was November 17, 1833, and that was apparently the year that John Loud returned to Philadelphia. Their first child, Caroline M. St. Loud, was born in 1834, so the 1833 date for the marriage may be correct.