24 THE BRONX SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



Later in his residence, Poe started a flower garden, and kept 

 singing birds in cages hung under the cherry branches. We 

 are told of mignonette and heliotrope, of dahlias and other 

 autumnal flowers. 



The disposition of the rooms in the house is a matter of 

 uncertainty. It seems probable, however, that the west room 

 downstairs was a bedroom, the east a sittingroom; the west 

 room upstairs was Poe's study, the east Mrs. Clemm's room. 



There were but few neighbors. Across the road, a little to 

 the south still stands John Valentine's white cottage: farther 

 up the mad were others of the same type, preserving the old 

 Dutch ideal of neatness, compactness and simplicity. 



The history of the Poe cottage, aside from Poe's brief 

 residence in it, has not hitherto interested Poe's many biog- 

 raphers. For the few facts 1 have been able to gather about 

 it, 1 am chiefly indebted to the kindness of one of the members 

 'if the New York University Council, Mr. Clarence H. Kelsey, 

 president of the Title Guarantee and Trust Company. To 

 go no further hack than the end of the eighteenth century and 

 the Fordham Manor days, we find the little triangular piece of 

 ground about one acre in extent, with the cottage in its north- 

 west corner, in the possession of John Berrian. It was known 

 to the nearest farmer in 1816 as Berrian's land. In 1822 

 Jonas Farrington bought it for $500 and sold it to Richard 

 Corsa in March, 1828, for $650, after a sale and repurchase 

 in November and March 27-8. John Valentine bought the 

 tract from Corsa. March 2<S, 1846, for a thousand dollars. 

 He must have advertised the place for rent at once, for by 

 June. 1846, Poe had become his tenant. Acting on good 

 business principles, Valentine let the house for ten per cent. 

 of its cost, a hundred dollars a year. 



To the cottage, then, in the summer of 1846, came the poet, 

 aged thirty-six, his wife, aged twenty-three, and his wife's 

 mother, who was also his aunt, a woman of fifty-six. From 

 the stray scraps we can gather, they were from the first pleased 

 with their home. ' The place is a beautiful one," wrote Poe 



