Westminster Cemetery 🪦
Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, located at 519 West Fayette Street in Baltimore, Maryland, is a historic cemetery established in 1786 by the First Presbyterian Church, now part of the University of Maryland School of Law grounds. Most famously, it is the burial site of Edgar Allan Poe, who was initially interred in an unmarked grave in 1849 at the back of the cemetery, near his grandfather’s family plot. In 1875, thanks to a “Pennies for Poe” campaign led by a local schoolteacher, Poe’s remains were moved to a prominent marble monument at the cemetery’s front, where he rests alongside his wife, Virginia Clemm Poe, and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm. The cemetery, featuring catacombs beneath the 1852 Gothic Revival church and the graves of notable Revolutionary War figures, is a National Historic District, drawing visitors for its Poe connection and the mysterious “Poe Toaster” tradition, where an anonymous figure left roses and cognac at Poe’s grave annually from the 1930s to 2009.