Famed Ancestors
Poe’s great-great-grandfather was named George Jacob Pfau and his wife Catharine. Pfau was of German extraction and his sons were the first to Anglicize their surname to Poe. Pfau’s sons Adam and Andrew were famed for their skirmishes with Native Americans in southern Beaver County. Both men were known as fearless fighters, and the first Andrew Poe is reputed to have slain the Wyandot Indian Chief Bigfoot in 1781. The brothers’ exploits were detailed in volume II of Theodore Roosevelt’s book, The Winning of the West from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi, 1777 - 1783. Poe is a second cousin of the painter Andrew Jackson Poe.
Read more about this topic: Orlando Metcalfe Poe
Famous quotes containing the words famed and/or ancestors:
“When went there by an age, since the great Flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)