Quoth the Raven: Stories from Westminster Burying Ground

Edgar Allan Poe's Baltimore burial grounds reveal a city's layered past through its notable graves and overlooked memories.

Edgar Allan Poe left his mark on the city of Baltimore. There is the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, a bar in Fell's Point that claims to have been his last stop, and even the local NFL team is named The Ravens. His final resting place is in the Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore, with his grave right inside the gate on West Fayette Street. Many stop at this monument, leaving flowers and paying their respects. A few venture further back into the cemetery where his original resting place is marked in the Poe family plot while taking in some of the other graves. Even fewer have a chance to visit the catacombs beneath the church, graves that remained there when the church was built over them. While this book will explore some of the mystery around Poe's death (as well as his anonymous visitor on his birthday, the Poe Toaster), it will also explore the stories of others buried in the cemetery. There are many veterans from the American Revolution and the War of 1812, dozens of war heroes with their stories to share. And there are also, of course, the people that are buried here that can give us some insight into what everyday life (and death) looked like in early Baltimore.