On a lofty, prominent wall, above the elevator, inside the Reading Room of the Library Archives of the United States Military Academy at West Point, a three-by-five foot marble memorial sculpture has the following lines from two pillars of Western Literature, exhibited as a stoic remembrance of a former 1831 Cadet of the Corps: In Memoriam to Edgar Allan Poe... How dark a woe! Yet how sublime a hope! How Silently Serene A Sea of Pride How Daring an Ambition! Yet how deep -- How Fathomless a  Capacity for love! THERE IS NO EXQUISITE BEAUTY WITHOUT SOME STRANGENESS IN THE PROPORTION. Sir Frances Bacon  I again visited this memorial to Edgar Allan Poe and could not but stare and feel remorse that since Poe left West Point, very few understand why. But he did not "flunk out," as I overheard one very ignorant woman stating to her male companion "on the plain" that day. Only Hervey Allen captures the facts of human tragedy that were the cause of Poe's departure from the scholarly successes which he had otherwise enjoyed as a member of the Corps of Cadets at that time. The nexus of Scotland, Edgar Allan Poe, and West Point has the underlying fact that the poet's paternal ancestors were Ulster-Scots (Scots living in Ulster, Ireland, but not Irish). A fact sheet in the Poe File in the Archives Division shows what only Hervey Allen has first reported in ISRAFEL: "Edgar (Allan) Poe's ancestry, on his father's side, was Scotch-Irish [now well established by the Ulster-Scots, in Belfast, Ireland, and Ulster-Scots-American Society, Knoxville, Tenn.], and can be traced to the Parish of Fenwick in Ayrshire, Scotland, where there were intermarriages with some of the remote ancestors of the Allans and Galts. The Poes belonged to the Protestant Scotch [Presbyterians] who went to Ireland. ...." These Scotch-Irish were Protestant Presbyterians (not Roman Catholic) whose descendants now call themselves Ulster-Americans, and are, themselves, descendants from the Ulster-Scots. These Scots, like Poe's ancestors, were from Ayrshire. Please see The Ulster-ScotNewspaper article mentioned elsewhere. The religious conflict between Charles I and the Scots Covenanters is the basis of the American First Amendment. The Ulster-Scots are largely responsible for the culture we know in America today. The photograph and research materials are a courtesy of both Mr. Alan Aimone, and Mrs. Alicia Mauldin-Ware, Archives Curators, U. S. Military Academy, Special Collections and Archives Division, West Point, N. Y. Mrs. Mauldin-Ware writes: "This picture was taken in the old library. When they built the present library they moved the marble archway to the now current library and located them in the West Point Room." Erected in 1903, it has been viewed by 103 years of visitors to the Library Archives.	"AS IT WAS FOR SO many young people West Point was a crucial moment in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Twenty-one years old when he entered West Point, Poe had already studied at the University of Virginia and served two years in the Army; his first published poems were attracting the kind of shocked and amazed attention that has pursued them ever since. His appointment to West Point was a last-ditch effort to please his rich and distant guardian-to choose a respectable, manly career over the contemptible perversions of poetry. The effort was an all-around disaster. It must have seemed promising at first. Poe had certain romantic aspirations toward a military life: he was a boy in 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette toured America to widespread acclaim, and when the old hero came to Richmond, Poe and a friend formed a volunteer company to greet him, marching up and down in uniforms with gilt braid, flourishing guns and swords. Later, when he enlisted, Poe had done well enough, his clerical skills winning him promotion, and allowing him to avoid a lot of tedious marching and guard duty. Arriving in June, 1830, at West Point, he passed the entrance examinations with no trouble. The other cadets looked on him with some awe, because he was older, and because Poe surrounded himself with an aura of mystery. He told stories of travels and adventures in Arabia and the Mediterranean, tales so full of color and detail his classmates soaked up every word as truth. Legends and rumors collected around him. For a while the notion circulated that he was the grandson of Benedict Arnold (Poe’s mother’s maiden name was Arnold), a story Poe refused to confirm or deny. He hardly studied, although he read constantly. He wrote just as constantly, spinning outlandish and romantic visions. He spent a lot of time at Benny Havens’ tavern, trading everything he could find, his candles, his clothes, for drink. The story (almost certainly false) persists that, ordered to turn out for drill armed and in crossbelts, he appeared in the belts and carrying his rifle and wearing not a stitch otherwise. But his guardian gave him no money--Poe had run deep into debt already--and the harsh life of the plebe, the endless marching, the miserable food, and the hazing by upperclassmen, broke down his health, at the same time convincing him that he could only live as a poet. By January of 1831, he claimed he was too sick to continue as a cadet. He left West Point that February 19, with his life set implacably on its tragic and extraordinary creative course." --C. H. The photograph of Cadet Poe that appears in the book with the text, above, is from: The Bicentennial Book of the United States Military Academy WEST POINT Two Centuries of Honor and Tradition, with an Introduction by General H. Norman Schwartzkopf, published by Warner Books, Inc, New York, ISBN 0-446-53018-2, in 2002. The book is available from Boarders Books, among the many retail book stores. Owing to my ignorance of the program that creates these web pages, I cannot use appropriate fonts and size to correctly punctuate the title of the book.  The book from which the page above was scanned has several pages dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. This sample was at page 39. At pages 42 and 43, the off-limits Pub, Benny Havens', in Poe's time was located just outside the Academy Gates in, "...Buttermilk Falls, on the bank of the Hudson [River]," popularized by Poe during his residency at the Academy. Benny Havens was celebrated in the song style made famous by his cousin, Scots poet Robert Burns, "Benny Havens, Oh!" Those with access to the Library Archives will find materials on this subject in Poe's "Vertical File."  For additional information of the dominant presence of Cadets with what is now called Ulster-Scots-American cultural and racial heritage, contact The Ulster-American Historical Society of the United States, The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, or The Ulster-Scots Agency, Belfast, Ireland.
The painting of Edgar Perry, Sergeant Major, Fort Monroe, Virginia, is courtesy of Mr. Paul Morando, Archives Director, of the Casemate Museum, Fort Monroe, Virginia. I have never seen this representation in any Poe materials before, and Mr. Morando stated that the water color had long been in the museum's vaults of stored relics. It was brought out for display for a special exposition program celebrating the history of Fort Monroe, and is graciously used by permission in our pages for the first time as well. This rare view of Poe in the United States Army and details of it exist in the full manuscript of our biography. Nevertheless, Poe's assignment as an artillery battery artificer [sic] is fully documented and explained by Professor Hecker in his book, stated above, but never by the poet himself.
Biographer of Edgar Allan Poe, Hervey Allen, in his 1926 as well as 1934 editions of his work, Israfel, provided a brief narrative of the Poe paternal genealogy, as retained in the material on Poe in the Archives of the Military Academy at West Point's Library. During one of our visits this writer made a copy of the document from which Allen took his information.  We provide it, above, for those who disbelieve our findings of a Poe Connection to Scotland.       With the aid of the Archives' staff, and their permission, we have included this document in our manuscript for publication.  Our visitors can see a note to "Mr. Russell [Staff Liberian at that time]," and signed by Carlyn Neal, who stated, in part, "...as done by my cousin."  At the top of her Family Tree is, "Traced to Parish of Fenwick in Ayrshire, Scotland."  The first members of the Tree are David Poe and Sarah Dring [sic].  Ignorant would be the person who would challenge such a document created for The United States Army, and retained in Archives at the Military Academy at West Point.  Those who argue against such facts and evidence have never been to West Point, and know nothing of American military requirements of accuracy in its records.  Given that my manuscript is overladen with other evidence of Poe genealogy, I include this Tree.      There are few facts of the Edgar Allan Poe Family Tree, above, to show more than four generations of the Poes of Ayrshire.  We have had much help from lay and professional genealogists and archive staff in Scotland, who aided our goal to show some of the unknown family connections with the Allans, Blacks, Burnes, Galts, and Poes, among many other family names that we found in the area.  All of these seperate and collective family trees will be available in our book.