Edgar Allan Poe and My Academic Village

When I designed the University of Virginia, my dream was to build an "Academic Village" where young minds could flourish. In February 1826, during our second academic session, a young man from Richmond named Edgar Allan Poe registered as our 136th student. He secured his spot partly through a recommendation from my close friend and university co-founder, General John H. Cocke, who knew Poe’s foster father, John Allan.

Poe lived in room 13 of the West Range, a space built to my exact architectural designs. As the university's Rector, I was his highest campus authority, though my failing health kept me confined mostly to Monticello. To stay connected with the students, I regularly hosted small, rotating groups for Sunday dinners at my estate. Because we selected guests alphabetically, Poe was officially scheduled on my roster for a dinner in November 1826.

Sadly, we never had that dinner. I passed away on July 4, 1826. I am told that when the university bells tolled for the very first time to announce my death, Poe was sitting in his modern languages class. Though we never spoke, he was among the undergraduates who walked up the mountain to Monticello to stand by my gravesite during my burial. Even after my passing, his ties to my legacy grew; that June, he had joined the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, the elite student organization named in my honor, and even served briefly as its temporary secretary.

Over the centuries, people have imagined a closer relationship between us. Campus rumors claim I summoned him to Monticello to lecture him about his massive gambling debts. Storytellers even fabricated a tale where we sat by a fireplace discussing his story, The Gold Bug, which is a piece he wouldn't even write until seventeen years after my death. Writers have even staged plays imagining that we secretly collaborated on a hidden codicil to the Declaration of Independence. In truth, we never shared a room or a conversation. Poe and I simply shared a brief window of time, bound together by the university I left behind.