That Time a 26 Year Old Edgar Allan Poe Married His 13 Year Old Cousin
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In this video:
Poe met his bride-to-be, Virginia Clemm, when she was 7 years old, and he was 20, shortly after his mother’s death in 1829. Their parents, his natural father (David Poe) and her mother (Maria Clemm), were siblings, and Poe had moved into the Clemm home briefly before his time at West Point was to begin. Being so close in time to the death of his mother, some authors have opined that he transferred his feelings for his mother to his Aunt Maria, and later to his cousin.
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Sources:
coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Al...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/artic...
poestories.com/read/ligeia
www.eapoe.org/people/poevc.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poe...
www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literatu...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia...
www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/...
Image Credit:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgini...
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I like how the title begins with "That time when" as if it's something Poe did one night while drunk and now his friends are retelling the story. "Hey do you guys remember that time when Allan over here married his 13 year old cousin? Classic Allan."
They are being a little too tryhard with their titles in shit. In fact the whole series "Today I found out" is a rip off of "Today I learned" aka "TIL" and he rips off VSauce with the annoying, pointless, and redundant "And as always, thanks for watching." Why do you start your last sentence with "and"? You're not continuing a subject you've jumped to a new one, the end. And you don't have to say "as always" just say it. Just say thanks for watching.
There is a TIL youtube channel but that one is long since dead, so that doesn't even count. If your talking about reddit, it still doesn't count.
And Poe said, "Don't call me Allen, that was my father's name. And I *hate* my father." Edgar signed all his works with "Edgar A. Poe"
@@promontorium *Chill, mate...*
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Hmm... So, Virginia was 13, but listed 21 on her marriage certificate. Then, if that kind of behavior was common, maybe the statistics that the average marriage age was 22 is based on lies?
Or they could marry younger and lie about their age, and not care about parental consent. I'm just saying those statistics aren't very reliable.
But these sorts of situations weren’t common. Things like this are so rare that they don’t really bring down the average.
It's not based on lies. It's based on whatever salvageable evidence is left from the time period. That much provides the standard for the information we use.
He groomed a virgin girl and then took her virginity when she was ready. A proper man doing what society considers proper manly, taking a young virgin's virginity.. Tragic Virginia died of TB so young. Not surprising he was so depressed.
@@low-fatmilklove1187, why do you assume they are "so rare"? Brooke Shields' grandmother married very young (15 if I remember correctly) and they filled in the marriage certificate with a false age but a correct year of birth. To my recollection it feels like about 1/4 of the kids in my high school married the summer after they graduated, or about age 18. If a guy was going to become an auto mechanic and the girl a homemaker, why wait? (I met my sweetheart in college, so not part of that crowd.) The problem is that when looking at old records there will be a bias. Records that would have shown marriage at an unacceptably young age were tweaked to appear older. (For the record, Laura Ingalls married at 18.)
Of course that doesn't mean a significant percentage of girls were marrying at 15, or 13, or even 7 (Brown Woman's story from "The Ways of My Grandmothers" by Beverly Hungry Wolf, pp 26-31). But it happened. And if the marriages had been correctly recorded they would significant pull the average down. A record of 21 doesn't move the average of 22.6 very much, but 13 has a disproportionate effect. Historically speaking, if 5% of girls were marrying before age 18, the records will show a far lower percent. Or in the case of Brown Woman, there never was a marriage license and so no record of her marriage.
You guys are like TMZ for history. lol
He didn't sleep in the same bed with her until she felt comfortable with it at about age 16. There's no record of her ever being pregnant, either. It's entirely possible there was no sex going on between them. In fact, if you read the letter he sent his aunt Maria declaring his love for Virginia, you can see how lonely he was and how bad his depression got when she wasn't there. While that doesn't necessarily mean it was totally platonic, it does seem to indicate that marrying her was more about not losing his closest friend and confidante than wanting to bang his teenage cousin, as everyone in the comments seems to think
The Crazy Curt Ghibli, Poe wasn’t some pervert! I’ve done research for 2 years on him, and he and Virginia never consummated. They were more like brother and sister. Forget the creeps and lies.
The Crazy Curt Ghibli, yep! Thanks for the reply. WE MUST BRING TRUTH TO THE LIFE OF POE!!! POE FANS! UNITE!!!
The Crazy Curt Ghibli, cool, thanks! Wanna see my kitten munch on some peculiar items? Watch my latest videos!
You do realize that he could have taken the family in without marrying her. He literally bribed them with it.
Seraphina Sullivan nooo they had sex u really think he fell in “love” with her a 13 year old and not have sex nawww it was list
Dammit Edgar, it's half _plus_ seven, not half _minus_ seven!
For those who don't know: This is a reference to a guideline for a relationship being creepy or not. If the younger partner is at least seven years more than half the age of the elder, it's fine. For instance, by this formula, a 26-year-old man would be fine dating someone who is at least (26/2)+7=20 years old.
It's obviously up in the air whether mathematical formulae can meaningfully approximate something so subjective as creepy relationships, but it's the best guideline I've heard.
Timothy McLean thx for using my age so I didn't have to do math to know I'm creepy.
I never heard of anything like this -- its seems very strange and arbitrary to me. I was raised with: If the younger is also an adult its cool. (Not that actually trying to catch someone young enough to reasonably seem like my daughter, wouldn't feel a bit awkward.)
Timothy McLean Hm...did the math and it works fairly well...for what I would generally consider 'appropriate'. I think it works because the older one gets, the less inappropriate a large age difference becomes. 20-17, 30-22, 40-27, 50-32, 60-37 that's 23 years age difference for the last couple, yet it's quite common for men that age to be with women in their thirties or forties...with a 20 year old, however it would be frowned upon, even though it's perfectly legal. Neat rule.
Give him a break, he excelled at writing not at math.
He technically never knew his real mother, having died when he was about a toddler. Are you referring to his step-mother? In any case, while I do believe Poe loved his wife, I am more than sure the marriage was largely for financial stability. I personally don't think they even consummated their marriage. Moreover, all the women in Poe's life died. Most of them, anyway. Early on, I'm sure Poe truly desired a maternal sense in his life, if not just a feminine one. He never got on with his step-father, and his step-mother of course died. He was very fond and protective of his step-mother. There could be so much more going on that we just don't know about. And we will probably never know. In any case, we can't look at this case from a 21st century view. He was allegedly a very loving and devoted husband, as well as a very friendly and playful sort of man when in Virginia's company.
The Mad Hattress, thank you, Poe was not some creepy pervert, he was a gentleman and having his mother dead he sought out women to care for him. He wanted a maternal relationship with a motherly woman and Virginia was perfect because she was kind, loving and inspired his work. She even looked like his mother! They loved each other even though their marriage wasn’t consummated. Again, thank you for clarifying that. I’ve studied Poe for years and I can tell you anything (nearly) you need to know about him.
Does this mean he was a . . . wait for it . . .
Poe-dephile???
Boo! Get off the stage!
No.
LMFAOAOAO THAT WAS ACTUALLY FUNNY I GOTTA GIVE IT TO YOU😂😂
😅
Gewgulkan Suhckitt, that was brilliant.
Another fun fact! The nature of their relationship is contested. There's some suggestion that this had more to do with adoption than romance. A lot of people's ideas about Poe (that he was a lecherous, perverted drunk) come from Rufus Griswold who wrote a horrible screed against Poe after he died.
Poe did help to birth the rumor by MARRYING his thirteen year old cousin.
@@Gapeaches77ableyeah I had hoped that he wasn’t a creep and that he only wanted to help the destitute family of Virginia, but it seems like he could have waited until she was older like her relatives wanted and still helped them. I still like his writings but I wouldn’t vouch for his character.
@@anastasia-fr1gn Love just can't wait.
Did anyone else notice at 2:12 the 1st letter of every line spells EdgarAllanPoe???
Devin Singleton it was an acrostic poem... that’s kinda the point
Holy shit. That bumps the mediocre poem up a few notches.
Shut up. You're named after a mountain range in Spanish. You can't explain shit.
promontorium lol that’s not my real name but cool
No, I didnt notice that!
[buys a red-tipped white cane]
Everyone, please watch my little nature videos. There is no talking in them. Shhh!
Whats the origin of using greek letters for fraternity/sorority house names
UndeadCoyote97 Ancient Greece. :p
Many of the first such organizations were literary societies whose members studied literature including Greek and Latin classics (especially Greek philosophical works), so their members had at least some familiarity with those languages. Their mottoes were often written in Greek and the initials of those mottoes used to identify them. Originally there were quite a few fraternities that did NOT use Greek letters, but the Greek tradition really caught on and now you have mostly Greek style fraternities and sororities.
2:12
FUN FACT: That poem is also acrostic and she spelled out Edgar Allan Poe on the side
thanks for your guiding
Just another example of why you need to know the difference between 'loving because you respect someone' and 'love because you're lonely'. If you're lonely any kind of affection seems like love.
Getting married as young as 26. What a pipe dream.
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
my great grandfather was 18 and his wife,my great grandmother was 13 when they got married!they were married for 68 years.he died at the age of 86 I believe.a year later my great grandmother died and was buried next to him in San Antonio
Still much closer in age than Poe & Virginia were.
Well, Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin's daughter in 1958 and she was only 13 years old. They had two children and divorced in 1970. And that happened a lot more recently than EAP's marriage to his child bride/cousin. Of course, both of these marriages took place in the deep south, so I don't think further explanation is needed.
It also ruined his career.
Intermarriage in families was highly prevalent in all cultures until fairly recently, there are biblical accounts going back thousands of years. Most wealthy families intermarried to keep wealth in the families, royalty to keep power in the same families ( Queen Elizabeth II is I believe second cousins with her husband of a million years. Princes Albert, Duke William and Prince Harry are inbred.
Actually, Poe and Virginia married in Virginia. Hardly the deep South. And back then it was still relatively common for cousins to marry.
Hunter deja yea, I know. That's what I was saying.
soccerchamp0511 it has never been common for cousins to marry (as a % of marriages)
MY LEG!!!!!!!!!!
so you're saying there's at least one case of a person being married when they were 13 although the record says they were 21... but this didn't usually happen according to the records.
does that not make sense to anyone else?
king james488, it makes perfect sense because the video only states that these sorts of things were rare, not that they didn’t happen at all.
@@low-fatmilklove1187 I think his point is - how do we know it is rare if we are using the very types of records that Virigina lied on? How do we know that lying about your age when getting married wasn't common? There could have been hundreds of 13 year olds saying they were 21, records would only show the 21, except in this famous case where we can trace it.
K Jova, that's a fun line of questioning. Answer is: we can't know exact numbers, but this is the sort of thing where it's so far in the past that there's no consequence for believing the numbers as they're presented now.
We'll use these numbers and if some other numbers come up in the future that check out better that's cool. We'll use those instead. Until then, we'll use the best available sources.
Believe it. Don't believe it. Either way, cite your sources, and that should be good enough.
@@kjova251 Because if it was so common there would be no reason to lie on record. Everyone would just say their real age was 13 if it was common because it wouldn't raise any eyebrows :)
I think at those times the life expectancy was like 40 years, so at 13 you pretty much had one foot on the grave, and the proof is that she died at 24.
1:44
That was the most painful poetry reading I've ever actually listened to.
You're great at spittin' the facts, one of my favorite channels, but that poetry was nails on chalkboard!
My grandfather married my grandmother when she was fourteen. They were married 65 years. He was 19. Has to be at least 60 descendants.
That's beautiful
Right when we are learning about him in class. Sweet.
What’s the history of cookies?
Probably less creepy than this.
The first cookies were created by accident.
The chef accidentally used a bit of his own special salty batter, if ya catch my drift.
Definitely a delicious history. Also, what history, you take flour and a fuckload of sugar. Bam. Cookies.
MrBondy123 in the beginning was the dough. And lo, the dough was in the oven, and when it left the oven there were cookies.
After the time of production the cookies were bagged and sealed, packaged and shipped.
In the fullness of time the bag of cookies was in the store. Then it was in my hand. After a journey of but few Miles, it was open. And then the cookies were in my mouth. And then there were no more cookies. And truly I say unto you, that great sadness filled the land.
And so ends the history of cookies.
there's way too many creeps in this comment section
You mean completely normal people who are simply admiring the man's accomplishments.
promontorium since when was pedophillia an accomplishment?
Then get out, and that will be one less.
Sara Jia I'll be a creep if you want me to.
Jimmy Rustler e_e ...
These Edgar Allan Poe videos fits perfectly with my literary history class!
How do we know the real average age of marriage when they fake the ages at the time? For this incident for example, she was 13 and they have her listed as 21 at the time of marriage. Who's to say that this wasn't a common practice? Just a thought.
General Ivan the fact that they lied about it meant that it was uncommon for a girl to be married so early, or it was frowned upon by the society at the time. And generally when someone goes to lie about their age they will generally set the number near an acceptable average, in this case 21 is fairly close to the average of 22.
Because it’s highly unlikely that majority of cases would slip through officials overseeing the wedding. Plus we have biographies and personal letters (records) to show how old people actually were at the time of their marriage and it’s not the norm that they lied. Most actually were in their very early twenties.
Mr.Poe-a-tree
Soooooubway😜
I wrote my freshman research paper on Poe and I remember including this part
Okay I got a question. If the age on her marriage certificate said 21 but she was in actuality 13 then how can the consensus of that time be trusted to reflect the actual age of the girls being married?
I remember learning this in school still think it’s gross lol
More cousins for the rest of then. :p
We learned about him like he was a great scholar and an educated poet and then it was like "he married his 13 year old cousin" and I was like 😐😕
I thought I heard the romantic nature of their relationship has been overplayed and that they never slept together. Will update with research later.
commenting to be notified of updates.
I just read something about that too but everything is just theories based off his writings and friends. However, they didn't sleep in the same bed until she was 16.
yes as well as that it is said that they had a relationship like brother and sister do, he have her nicknames: sis and sissy, (probably) short for sister
"Sissy" was a term of endearment. He referred to Maria Clemm as "Muddy" does that mean she was covered in mud?
@@MrBulwer Muddy could have stemed from the first syllable in "Maria", like a shortened form of "Maria, dear" that turned into "Ma-dea" (Muddy). Its very eandearing
I would suppose that the numbers used to determine the average ages of women in marriage were taken from the marriage certificates. Virginia was 13, but listed as 21 on their marriage certificate. The marriage certificates would be the best possible document to determine the average ages of those whom married, as they typically are publicly available documents. If other marriages during that period also contained fictitious ages, it could falsely give a higher average. I highly doubt the researchers went as far as to look at birth records as well to verify the ages of those that married. In the case of Poe and Virginia more research was conducted due to his works and popularity, which would be why we know that the marriage certificate contained a falsified age for Virginia.
This is helpful for my English class
My parents were married at 14 and 15 and have been very successfully married for 51 years.
VocalEdgeTV oh
VocalEdgeTV oh
VocalEdgeTV oh
not as bad imo because there isn't an age difference to suggest pedophilia
adults marrying children is pretty fucked up
I am so glad I subscribed to your channel
That was heartbreaking.
What was the heartbreaking part? They had a great relationship, full of love!
@@BodilessVoice I saw a comment that you posted from 4 years ago talking about how child marriage is "beautiful". Have you just been coming to this video for 4 years straight to praise pedophilia? Wtf if wrong with you?
Judging historical mores by today's social beliefs will always end up making historical characters look bad. The only justice is that someday you, too, will be condemned for breaking social rules that have not yet been created.
jhg66466, well with Edgar Allan Poe, there's a whole wave of people who'd rush to their keyboards to defend him, so it's not like this sort of thing tarnished his memory.
Still, I reserve the right to call him E. Allan Poe-dophile.
I remember learning about this in Freshman year of Highschool, ah the Edgar chapter
Please make a video on the battle of Itter Castle, the only WWII battle in which Americans fought alongside Germans.
Why are there D. C .AA. and AAA batteries but no A or B batteries.
Bad Cattitude - it is very useful in slimline pocket flashlights.
Jim Gordon there are
There is a B battery, it just isn't commonly used anymore. It was mainly used for headlights on bicycles.
Jim Gordon
No, AAAA batteries are still around, you can still find them in hardware stores
That's not what I asked.
This creepy in several ways, how proper for the Halloween season.. *shivers*
I'm quite fond of the name Annabel Lee. It's a very nice sounding name.
My favorite writer
Seems like Virginia was quite a fitting name for her.
I think this is the first time I realized that Virginia has Virgin in it...
Mediahound, not if she was sleeping with her cousin when she was thirteen.
I just got home from school and we just learned this today, so weird
Would love to see a video on Anders Lassen, a Major in the British Army during WWII, and the only non-commonwealth person to receive the Victoria Cross during WWII.
2:12 i looked at the capital letters and thought to myself it would be fun to see what the first letters make. I tried to sound them out and then realize it spells EDGAR ALLAN POE now thats writing
The thing is how accurate can the census been when ages easily forged in documents
I can't say much as my maternal great-grandmother was 15 and pregnant when she married my great-grandfather who was 29 and a preacher. She went on to give birth of 13 children, none of which were multiples. My grandmother was #9. They lived in a three-room log cabin with the boys sleeping in the loft. I've been to the cabin, and it was tiny!
Hi we have a question. Do you know why we call the top brass in the military the top brass?
“ There’s nothing more purely Blossom”
interesting how i was just covering him in my literature class today
Can you guys do a video on theJFK Assassination files that will be realised on the 26/10/17
My cycle started when I was 14 and I can only imagine if Edgar had to be the 1st to know about his wife's cycle.
Just like Jerry Lee Lewis and his cousin Myra, also 13 when he married her -- though I think don't quite so devoted as Poe, at least in the long term.
You say the mean age of marriage for women is 22 but you also said that they lied on Virginia's license saying she was 21, so how many others lied? you just don't know do you?
At 1:22 privately is spelled privatly
This is very interesting to watch at 3am
Hahahaha we just read *The Tell-Tale Heart* today in Lit Class
Hey vsauce Micheal here
James Walsh Hey Vsauce Simon here
There is no link in the description about the age of adulthood as referenced in 4:14 of this video.
If her marriage certificate said she was 21, how many other girls who were married quiet young had that age or something similar put down?
Just had an ad for love simon
Annabelle Lee is probably not about her. But about a love lost when he was much younger or one not brought to fruition. He was a bit indecisive where commitment was involved.
Today I also found out there is a 1938 movie titled "Child Bride" in which a female schoolteacher tries to convince a hick town that marrying children is wrong. So I'm glad your bonus fact mentioned this was not common, as this movie had me thinking otherwise. Also, it was a really f'ed up movie.
You referred to a link to another video 'down below' about how they desire adult age but it is not in there.
Great video, thank you very much , note to self(nts) watched all of it 4:36
We just read the pedestrian at school and then this..
Kind of confused at your bonus fact. You mention that it is a misconception that girls were routinely being married as young as 13 but earlier in the video you point out that Virginia had lied about her age when they were married. How do we know lying wasn't common?
The wedding certificate for this marriage listed Virginia's age as 21 even though she was 13, which would lead me question the reliability of statistics that are gathered from official records when such records could be inaccurate.
I wonder if Jerry Lee Lewis took his inspiration from Poe on that 13-year-old wife thing . . .
Did any one notice that the letters at the beginning of each sentence of the poem aline to edgar allen poe? or is that normal
Virginia's poem is reminiscent of "Annabel Lee''..
is the Billy Joel song Only the Good Die Young a reference to this?
0:04 - FYI, incorrect spelling "Allan" not "Allen"
Allan Johnson Right! I mean, at least spell Poe's correctly.
Allan Johnson, he also hated when people used his middle name. Pretty funny since everyone knows him by his whole name.
I enjoy your amazing storytelling.
Since it seems that people have a tendency to lie, even on "official" forms, would it be safe to say no data ever presented to you is accurate in any way?
What the fuck!
Poe's book of poems was the first reported use of Crowd Funding.
Bear in mind the exact nature of their relationship is debated by biographers. As for accusations of "Mental", as I recall Poe suffered from depression and alcoholism.
Supposedly Virginia's death was the reason for Poe's alcohol relapse (after being sober for quite awhile).
if you get to new york city sometime, check out poe park and the poe house there
Oh boy, another Poe fact...just do an hour episode on the schmuck!
0:05 you spelled his name wrong, it’s Allan not Allen
Goodness gracious great balls of fire!
Incest and hebephilia were very common practices back in those days, and still is in many parts of the world.
So...
She was 13 but had 21 as her marriage certificate age.
Wonder how many others did the same thing.
Wonder where the marriage age data comes from...
Marriage certificates maybe?????
Which season/episode of Game Of Thrones is he referencing?
So, if Virginia got married at 13, but listed her age as 21, how common was that? Perhaps your statistics on the period are skewed by what might have been a common practice of listing an older age when girls got married. Just a thought.
@3:53 you say, "the mean age for both women... " the word both doesn't make sense there and it isn't written in the blurb next to you. Oopsie.
Why stock photos links are in russian?
Picasso married his second and last wife (he was never married to Francoise Gillot, though the were together for 10 years and had two children, one being Paloma), when she was 24 and he was 70. They remained married for 22 years until his death at 92. She stayed unmarried afterwards and 15 years after his death commited suicide by shooting herself. One of the reasons for her prolonged depression was the absence of Picasso, whom she could never get over.That is true love.
Glad someone is being loud about this. I couldn't read his shit afterwards.
You are so fucking salty. I can't believe you actually took the time to write this. Omg hahaha.
Fite me
I mean - if she lied about her age when married, who's to say a lot of other girls didn't as well - and all of our data is screwed.
She didnt lie, she probably didnt get a choice for her age being advanced on the marriage certificate
Simon, he Whistlers
Aww that's so sweet
you should put your mic right underneath you button on your shirt. Not off to the side like you have it. Watch other hosts of tv shows an copy them. Your microphone placement is not aesthetically pleasing. It comes off as amateur and distracting. Just want to help.. keep up the great work!
You said it yourself that Virginia's marriage certificate stated she was 21 years old. How much credence can you really give to that "study"?
Edgar Allan Poe. The first modern emo.
Sam Tabatowski
*Goth, how even dare you.
Addressing the bonus fact at the end.
How can we trust the accuracy of those statistics, if you mentioned that the girl's age was falsified in the marriage certificate ?!!
Virginia invited Francis to their house because it stopped Edgar's drinking and it made him happy, his great love was Virginia, but his great love affaire was Francis
source pls