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Poe's Scottish Connections
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Searching For Poe In Scotland
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The above is a scene of the ship-building port and quay of Geurock, Invercllyde, on the south side of the Firth of Clyde, in 1815.
Alexander Allan, with his cousin, John Galt, built their first of a fleet of ships here in 1812, later known as The Allan Line of Shipping. Alexander Allan and his cousin, the Scots novelist, John Galt, are seen in this artist's rendering of their awaiting arrival of their cousin from America, John Allan, his wife Frances (aka Valintine), and their son, Master Edgar Allan Poe.
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The above illustration of Edgar Allan Poe's uncle is from the cover of JOHN GALT 1779-1979, Ed. by Christopher Wahtley, published by Ramsay Head Press, Edinburgh. However, the illustration is from, "the portrait by Charles Grey, reproduced by permission of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery." This, and many other books Ms. Cooperwhite brought to our attention while in the James Watt Memorial Library Museum on Union Street. From this, and several other books of and by John Galt, we were able to establish the blood and legal relationships of the Allans, Burns, Galts, and Poes neverbefore known in the scholarship of each writer.
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Research Assistant Grace Kimi Kenmotsu is standing at the Memorial Font of Scots novelist John Galt. Galt was both cousin of Scots National Bard Robert Burns and their cousin John Allan. Allan was the father of American literary genius Edgar Allan Poe, adopted under the prevailing Law of Scotland at the time.
This and other Galt sites in Greenock, Strathclyde, Scotland were shown to the researchers, courtesy of William Wallace scholar Paul Cooper. These site facts have since been displaced by "development" in the area. The Galt family lair has been moved, and contents now uncertain. It was stated that Burns' Highland Mary was buried in this Galt lair.
Both Ms. Cooperwhite and the Secretary of the Greenock Burns Club have since corrected this error of fact.
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Pictured above is the John Galt family lair in Greenock. The fact that Galt's cemetery plot has also been removed from its original site, and moved to its present location where family and friends of the deceased are also no longer living to visit the grave, suggests the same disregard for the dead that Poe wrote about so often. John Galt was one of the most famous and successful businessmen and writers of Scotland during his time, 1781 to 1839.
His father, William, a "substantial ship master," removed his son from the Irvine Academy where both John Allan and Master Allan attended. William Galt moved to Greenock to escape his son's substandard academic performance at the school for Irvine-area sons of the elite.
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Ms. Lesley Cooperwhite is the sort of Local Historian-Council employee without whom our findings were impossible. She both directed us to the John Galt connection to Edgar Allan Poe, but to all of the materials of interest in a search of Galt. In no other repository of archives did we find what is available of Galt only at The Watt Museum Library.
She volunteered that the very first Burns Club in the world was founded by his cousin, John Galt. That Club is known as "The Mother Club." Both Grace and I have become friends of all at "The Mother Club," as well as the Robert Burns World Federation, Ltd., headquartered in Dower House, Dean Country Castle, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire.
Ms. Cooperwhite has become an active correspondent with us since her retirement. Fortunately, she has remained an ongoing source of facts of which only the local historians in Scotland know. She has, for example, provided facts of the heretofor unknown family connection of Burns' Highland Mary, which we present elsewhere.
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