Edgar Allan Poe
... second of their three children. About the time the third child was born, the father died, or disappeared, and Mrs. Poe came to Richmond with the two youngest children. The older boy, William Henry, had already been left with relatives in Baltimore. Mrs. Poe was in the last stages of tuberculosis. Ravaged by the disease and worn out with the struggle to support her children, died when Edgar was two years old, and Rosalie was just an infant. They were both orphaned. It was on a visit of charity that Mrs. Frances Allan, the wife of a rising merchant in Richmond, learned of the plight of the Poe babies. She had no children of her own and she was more attracted to handsome little Edgar. She took him home with her and another family took Rosalie, this was in 1811. Taken by the Allan family to England at the age of six, Poe was placed in a private school. When he returned to the United States in 1820, he continued to study in private schools. He attended the University of Virginia for a year, but in 1827 his foster father, mad at Poe’s drinking and gambling, refused to pay his debts and forced him to work as a clerk. Poe really hated this job so he quit the job, and then he went out of touch with Allan, and moved to Boston. There he wrote his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), which was published anonymously. Shortly afterward Poe joined the U.S. Army and served a two-year term. In 1829 he wrote a second volume of verse, Al Aaraaf, was published, and he made peace with Allan, who secured him an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. After only a few months at the academy Poe was dismissed for neglect of duty, and his foster father disowned him permanently. Poe's third book, Poems, appeared in 1831, and the following year he mov...