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:
“As an individual, I myself feel impelled to fancy ... a limitless succession of Universes.... Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its proper and particular God.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“There is ... a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language.... Now, so entire is my faith in the power of words, that at times, I have believed it possible to embody even the evanescence of fancies such as I have attempted to describe.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimism ... it was surely Edgar Allan Poe—without question the bravest and most original, if perhaps also the least orderly and judicious, of all the critics that we have produced.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)