Edgar Allan Poe
A persistent, though mostly apocryphal story involving Fort Independence was allegedly the inspiration behind one of Edgar Allan Poe's well known works. A monument outside the west battery of the fort marks the grave of Lieutenant Robert F. Massie who was killed in a duel there on December 25, 1817. According to folklorist Edward Rowe Snow, Massie was so popular with the soldiers stationed at Fort Independence that they took out their frustration on his killer, Lieutenant Gustavus Drane, by walling him up within a vault in the fort. Edgar Allan Poe, while serving with the 1st United States Artillery Regiment at Fort Independence purportedly heard the tale and was inspired, according to Snow, to write The Cask of Amontillado.
The legend that purportedly inspired Poe is not entirely accurate. The duel did in fact take place, but the victor, Lieutenant Drane, was not murdered by the fort's soldiers but continued in his military career and was later promoted to the rank of captain. After the Second World War Lietenant Massie's remains were moved to the cemetery at Fort Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts.
Read more about this topic: Fort Independence (Massachusetts)
Famous quotes by edgar allan poe:
“What I here propound is true: ... if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will ‘rise again to ... Life Everlasting.’”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of ‘respectability’ in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The death ... of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)