Edgar Allan Poe was memorialized on a postage stamp in 1949 and again in 2008.

One of my experiences as an elementary school child was shared by hundreds of other Newburgh youngsters. In the days of neighborhood schools, we went out on walks that today would be called field trips and toured important city places that every child should understand: the Post Office, the Park, the Fire House, the Police Station. Many of us have compared memories of those walks over the years and remember one feature of the police station tour that fascinates us more now than it did then.

The desk sergeant came down from his high desk and pulled out a big ledger in which arrests were chronicled. The one he led us to was very old, dating back to the early nineteenth century. In it, he pointed to one arrest of a man noted as E.A. Poe. His offense was D&D (the abbreviation for drunk and disorderly) and the disposition of the arrest was USMA Provost, meaning the Provost Marshall was called from West Point Military Academy and, presumably, came to get the wayward cadet named E.A. short for Edgar Allan Poe.

Time at West Point as a cadet (July 1830 to February 1831) was Edgar Allan Poe’s connection to us who live in the mid-Hudson Valley. As for his behavior that day in Newburgh when the police collected him and called his superiors, he may have been one of a party of young troops who left the post (far easier to do in 1830) but he was the one caught here. He may have wandered up to Newburgh alone (he was older than most of his fellow cadets and may have sought time away from them). He may have craved drink or medicine (many freely-sold patent medicines then contained alcohol or opium) He may have been drawn to a livelier place than Highland Falls of 1830 where he would have been easily spotted.

Was he a drunkard as some stories repeat? There are many more enlightened studies of his life and health since his untimely passing back in 1849. Many nineteenth century people were alcoholics. They also had addictions to things like laudanum, a medicinal mixture of opium in alcohol. Some researchers believe Mr. Poe was hypoglycemic which could explain his reported sudden shifts of behavior. Whatever his health or life issues, he left his homeland with a rich body of literature that thousands continue to study and enjoy.

Halloween approaches this week, a holiday when we are most directed to think about the spooky side of death and all its mythology. Edgar Allan Poe dwelled on that mythology in many of his writings, making his name still synonymous with thoughts of “the other side.” Yet, his thoughts were not unique for his times. He lived in the “Romantic Era,” and literature, art and architecture all exhibited the human struggle in the 1830’s to balance the beauty of nature and the unsettling fear of early death. Walk through a cemetery like Old Town on Grand Street and gravestone markings make it clear why people were unsettled and drawn to the Gothic tales of an author like Poe. So many Newburghers died at very young ages leaving family and friends in grief and in turmoil wondering about the afterlife. Disease like the cholera epidemic that swept through the state in the early 1830’s, or the dangers of everyday life, brought Newburgh’s residents to funerals. Old newspaper records are full of reports of infant mortality and of the accidents that so easily befell hardworking people in everyday activities – drownings, train collisions, farm and industrial mishaps.

Inside the pages of a Poe story or poem are illustrations that also link us to the Romantic era and the Gothic revival. After a visit to Old Town Cemetery walk for a few moments along the sidewalks of that old neighborhood. The carved roof brackets and porch trim fitted into graceful curves, the oddly shaped windows high up on brick walls, the ornate black iron trim on roof ridges or balconies all echo the sentiments we feel reading about our early neighbors in the books of long ago. If we could knock on the doors of those first residents, we would likely find a few books on their tables or shelves -- books by Walpole, Shelley, Coleridge and Byron and, yes, Edgar Allan Poe who, according to a long-lost but well-remembered log book, spent a night inside our old village jail.