the
appearance of Mrs. Poe on the stage. "At this time," he says, speaking
of her prolonged absence in 1807, "William Henry _may have_ been born;"
and accordingly fixes Edgar's birth as having occurred two years later,
in 1809.

Wishing to satisfy myself on this point, I some time since decided to go
to the fountain-head for information, and wrote to Mrs. Byrd, a
daughter of Mrs. Mackenzie, who had been brought up with Rosalie Poe.
Her answer I have carefully preserved and here give _verbatim_:

"Dear S----.--You ask the ages of Rose and Edgar. He was born in 1808,
Rose in 1810. A remark of his (in answer to an invitation to her
wedding) was that if I had put off my marriage one week it would have
been on his birthday. I was married on the 5th of October.... Their
mother died on the 8th Dec., 1811; and on the 9th the children were
taken to Mr. Allan's and our house.... Their mother was boarding at Mrs.
Fipps', a milliner on Main street. She was Scotch and of good family;
and my father and Mr. Allan had her put away decently at the old Church
on the Hill.... Mr. Poe died first."

This account of the children's ages is entitled to more weight than
those of his biographers, based upon mere calculation and
"_probabilities_." When the children were baptized as Edgar Allan and
Rosalie Mackenzie, their ages were also recorded, though whether in
church or family records is not known; and it is not likely that Mrs.
Byrd, who was brought up with Rosalie Poe, could be mistaken on this
point.

Were Woodbury correct in assuming that William Henry, the eldest child,
"_may have_ been born" in October, 1807, and Edgar, January 19, 1809,
it would follow that the latter, when taken charge of by the Allans in
December, 1811, was less than two years old; an impossibility,
considering that his sister was then over one year old and running about
playing with other children. As to Mr. Poe's claim to October 12 as his
birthday, it is not likely that, howsoever often he may have given a
false date to others, he would have ventured upon it to the daughter of
Mrs. Mackenzie, the latter of whom would have detected the error.

It must be accepted as a final conclusion that, as Mrs. Byrd states,
Edgar was born in 1808 and Rosalie in 1810.[2] Her positive assertion is
proof sufficient against all mere calculation and conjecture; and in
this book I shall hold to these dates as authentic.

[2] The official date of Rosalie Poe's death, on June