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ORLANDO METCALF POE. 
This casual tribute, from so eminent a source, to the im¬ 
pression which Poe’s strong personality created is, however, 
in one sense misleading. Poe was at that time not merely 
a man of promise; the record of his life was already more 
full of things accomplished than fall to the lot of most men, 
as will appear from the brief statement of his career which 
this sketch permits. 
His paternal ancestor was George Jacob Poe, who emigrated 
to this country from Germany, and who settled in Maryland 
in 1745. Thence members of the family migrated westward 
and settled in Ohio, where, in the town of Navarre, Stark 
county, Orlando Metcalf Poe was born on March 7, 1832. 
He received his early education at public schools and at the 
Canton Academy, and was teaching a district school when 
a fortunate opportunity, which he was quick to seize, enabled 
him to carry out a long cherished wish to enter West Point 
as a cadet. 
One day while he was in a neighboring town he met, on a 
passing train, a youth who had been appointed, but who had 
failed to maintain himself at the Military Academy. Poe, 
realizing his opportunity, mounted a horse and rode sixty 
miles to see the member of Congress from his district, from 
whom he solicited and obtained the appointment to the 
vacant cadetship. He graduated from West Point in 1856, 
and served as topographical engineer on the survey of the 
Great Lakes until the threatened outbreak of the Civil War, 
when he offered his services to Governor Dennison, of Ohio, 
who summoned him as soon as hostilities commenced. He 
assisted in organizing the first Ohio regiments of volunteers, 
but declined a proffered command because it was then the 
intention of the War Department to keep the regular army 
together. Poe, however, suggested to the governor to ap¬ 
point George B. McClellan, who was then in civil life, to the 
command of the Ohio troops. He sought out McClellan and 
introduced him to Governor Dennison, who, acting on Poe’s 
advice, appointed him to the command. 
It would be out of place here to give General Poe’s mili- 
