"On 7 October 2000 we returned to the Poe Exhibit of the Poe-Allan headstone at the Saltcoats Museum. During that visit, we found several other facts and relics about Poe. At the Dundonald Parish Church, between Kilmarnock and Irvine, Robert Kirk, Archivist, showed us an 1816 Holy Communion pewter service set that had been given by John Galt, of Craiksland Farm, to the church, in celebration of the end of the War of 1812, and the arrival of his family from America: John Allan, his wife, Francis, and their adopted son, Edgar Allan Poe.
"It has taken years to integrate into our manuscript the information that we learned on that our first trip, as well as much more that has come to us from our correspondents, since. One example is from Sharon Smith, local lay genealogist at Ardrossan. The Poes of Fenwick Parish were from an estate called "Pokelly." Still another writer, Frank Beattie, of the local Kilmarnock Standard newspaper, has sent us a map showing that, in fact, there are four Pokellys! Finally, thanks to the Kilmarnock Historical Society, and Frank Beattie, there is a plaque marking Poe's aunt's and uncle's former home site in Kilmarnock." The Poe Family Organization of America expressly denies the existence and connection of the Poes of Ayrshire to their family line! Of course, they are not important to Poe and his works. But see my article in the Ulster-Scot newspaper
The Dick Institute, etc....
Located in Kilmarnock, the Dick Institute is the premier research library of the East Ayrshire Council. The Brills' research for Poe began at The Dick Institute after Local History Librarian, Anne Geddis, sent a copy of the article from James Gracie, "Poe's Scottish Connections," in The Scots Magazine, from which they have taken the above illustration. The Irvine Parish church is precisely as illustrated, while Poe and his English Usher are remarkable conjectures of how they would have appeared. However, Dr. McKay (Mac Keye), member of the Irvine Burns Club, and friend of the Burns' Statue patron, Spiers, first wrote of Poe's connections to Irvine, and Ayrshire in his History of Ayrshire. The Dick Institute, however, is the repository of all public and private documents of this geographical area. This town was the site of many members of Poe's blood and adoptive family, especially the Parish of Fenwick, from which David Poe left in 1742. The Brills' book, "Mar'se Eddie" in the Shire, catalogues each and every site in Scotland that they know of which has some connection to Poe.
They have found that while virtually nothing of Poe's Scottish connections were known to local public educators and government staff, several of their web pages now include notes of his having been there with his adoptive father, John Allan, and uncle John Galt. In the process, they discovered that Allan and Scots' Bard, Robbie Burns, were cousins. These facts are now well known in Scots' periodicals, including the BURNS CHRONICLE.
As a consequence of assistance of The Caledonian Club of San Francisco's Literary Committee, and their connections with the Burns Federation, Kilmarnock, the project has proven to be exciting to both Americans and Scots alike.
Search Poe in Scotland and Robert Densmore Brill...
As data of our research are published, we will post excerpts of that information on this page. Consult, however, both the MLA and Poe Studies bibliographic data for articles on these subjects published thus far by Brill. The Burns Chronicle, The Family Tree Magazine, The Atlantic Literary Review, Frank Beattie's Proud Kilmarnock Stories of a Town, BBC Scotland Radio, Ayrshire local newspapers and magazines, and others have published articles of the Brills' research. Moreover, as our correspondents submit information that can be presented here, without compromising our most important, newly discovered facts of Poe and his relatives in Ayrshire, we will post that here as well. See our Links page.
Years of research, travel, and writing indicate a treasure chest of source information; however, our book is still "in progress." An important find, since featured in the Edgar Allan Poe Review, for the Poe Studies Association, is the Poe-Allan family headstone, now on permanent display at Saltcoats Museum. The Brills were informed that the article triggered a hail of opposition by scholars who insist Poe's family were Irish, and had no connections in Scotland. They have also published, "The Poes of Ayrshire, Scotland," in The FAMILY TREE magazine, and lectured in Moultrie, Georgia at their Scottish Weekend. That article resulted in several exciting letters from Poe family members in American, and others.
Presently, they recommend only those interested students of Poe link with this page and our AOL Homepage, Searching for Poe in Scotland until our web pages are complete, or we can publish the book.
One of the Scots correspondents mentioned above, Frank Beattie, advised the Brills by e-note (2-13-01) of an important local item, "about 'The Big Gray Man of Ben McDhul,' a legend about a 'ghost' on Scotland's second highest mountain. There are some similarities with [Poe's] 'The Tale of Ragged Mountain.'" His research of this legend's connection to a short story by Poe will be up-dated here when Beattie finds it.
Also, Scottish Travel Writer, mentioned above, James Gracie, as well as Atholl, Perthshire, bookstore owner, Nancy Cameron, and North Ayrshire Senior Museum Director, Mark Strachan, advised that the BBC Scotland Radio were to broadcast a program of "heretofore unknown connections of Poe with Scotland," and they await the BBC's response to their inquiry of it. The program, in fact, has since aired in March 2001. In their program Professor Hook was asked of Brill's pronouncement that Poe is the "Father of American Literature," and replied that he did not believe so. This issue is both well documented and discussed in the forthcoming book. Additionally, a former child of Saltcoats, Irene McCart, now living in Germany, provides other insights that only a "local" who has read the material could know. She returns to Saltcoats in August 2001 for further research on the project's behalf.
If one has information of "Poe in Scotland," or would like to be added to the mailing list for Notice of Publication of "Mar'se' Eddie" in the Shire, e-mail us at this site, or Poeinscotland@aol.com.
The Brills were in Atlanta, Georgia, July 20th, 2001, for the Annual Robert Burns World Federation Limited Conference, where, for only the second time in the Federation's 115-year history, they will meet outside of Scotland for this major gathering of Burns' enthusiasts. At that momentous event, the Brills learned that both the immediate past president, John Skilling, as well as the new one, James Gibson, are past students of the Kilmarnock Academy--important to the ongoing effort of Scottish educator and student outreach of the book's project.
Also as a coincidence of "rubbing elbows" with the members of the Robert Burns World Federation Limited, Professor G. Ross Roy, owner of the most important collection of Burns materials outside of the Museum in Alloway, has added the journalism collage of articles and photographs of the Brills' research trips to Scotland to his Burns Collection research materials and exhibits at the Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina at Columbia. Also, of the five featured speakers at the Burns Federation's Annual conference, this year in Atlanta, Georgia, all of the speakers at the Robert Burns & America Symposium, were visibly interested in the Burns-Poe connections that the Brills have developed in their research.
Brill invited Esther Hovey, retired professor of California State University at Long Beach, and wife of Serge Hovey, who collected every song Burns is known to have written, and who was their table-mate at the Saturday night grand party, to attend the Caledonian Club of San Francisco's 2001 136th Annual Scottish Gathering and Games; Kenneth Simpson, visiting authority of Burns from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow; Thomas Keith, New York actor who has made a study of the statuary of Burns around the world, and James Mackay, Glasgow author and former Editor of the Burns Chronicle were all interested in the Brills' project of Poe's Scottish Connections.
"In the Burns-Poe blood and family connection, we have made the wonderful connection by correspondence of Mr. Thomas Hutton, Scottish historian, who had written of that issue, even before John McInnes. Mr. Hutton, Secretary to the Fife Area Association of Burns Clubs (now retired to Dunfermline), has provided extraordinary information of not only his research and writings on the Burns-Poe family connections, but of the Alexander and John Allan blood and family connections as well. He was the local historian who found the existence of the Poe Shipping Line of Ayrshire and Galloway ports that became part of the Allan Line of Shipping. We are still working on incorporating his newly acquired information into our manuscript. We now have at least six writers in Scotland who have addressed Poe's Scottish Connections, and have allowed us to use that material. The unbelievable connections between these Ayrshire Lads continues to amaze us, and new updates will appear in these pages."
Finally, Mr. Alan C. Aimone, Senior Special Collections Librarian, of the United States Military Academy Library at West Point, New York, has retained a journalistic collage and copies of some of the articles in which Brill has published, such as the Ulster-Scot newspaper of Belfast, Ireland. It is of interest to note that at that same library is a rare copy of a video, Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living, which may be available nowhere else? With the foregoing discoveries, one is reminded that, "...Of a wild lake, with black rock bound/And the tall pines that towered around..." may have been in Scotland, not North Caroline, after all.
Viewers not familiar with either Robert Burns or John Galt now have online web sites of those and other Scottish writers and subjects. Not mentioned in our pages here, but treated in our book, are other writers and thinkers who were either influenced by Poe and his life and works, such as Nabokov in his Lolita, and Nietzsche, as mentioned in his letters to others. One of the most important actions that Brill has taken since beginning this Project is to have joined established scholarly and social organizations. For example, as explained above, Brill joined not only the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Richmond, Virginia, but the Modern Language Association (MLA) as well. Membership in the MLA led to memberships in the STAR Project, as well as the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, and so on. We have networked what little we knew of Poe into an area of associations and research never before imagined by others. Details are fully documented in our book. However, as explained in our discussion of Carl Jung's concept of "spontaneous creation," other scholars, in Scotland, have "discovered" our efforts, and have published short articles on the Poe Connection with Scotland. This, I hoped for!
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