Visitors to the Poe House will find the front shades drawn and a black ribbon attached to a muffled doorbell. Mirrors are covered in the parlor where an actual turn of the century coffin is placed. Clocks are stopped. Mrs. Poe's calling card is outlined in black due to the death of her daughter Dixie and is placed inside the doorway. The rules for mourning are strict in 1913. Coordinated by Museum of the Cape Fear, historian Kathryn Beach, and Heidi Bleazey, the Poe House education coordinator, the Poe House has been redecorated to reflect three aspects of mourning in the Victorian period: the home funeral, dressing a house for mourning, and the personal affectations of mourning.

The Poe House represents an upper class home, yet both historians are sharing information with the public that would have been the mores for a typical mourning ritual in the Victorian period during tours and a lecture.

The exhibit opens October 1 and ends November 2, 2003. Tours through the Poe House have been scheduled and a lecture by Beach on October 12th is titled "The Cemetery Art of Cumberland County."

According to Beach, the idea of representing mourning rituals is only part of the museum's plan to explore themes in the Victorian period which would affect an individual's life. Future themes will include weddings and other passages of the living. The exhibit, Sorrow is Sacred: Mourning at the Poe House, the tours and the lecture examines rules, dress and bereavement behavior during this period in history.

Beach and Bleazey researched texts, newspaper obituaries, etiquette books from the 1900s, and the oral history from older citizens who remember the stories told to them by family members. Beach shared how the home funeral was common place throughout history in this country until the business of funeral homes started developing after the early 20th century. She shared how the "sideline of a cabinetmaker was usually being an undertaker. The cabinetmaker came to the house, measured the deceased, built the coffin, and transported the body to the cemetery."

Beach added, "embalming was known as early as the Civil War and was used when bodies were shipped home from long distances. Society in general, however, was resistive to embalming; it was considered a violation to the body. By 1900, a growing number of Americans were using a professional undertaker, who came to the home to prepare the body for burial and do the work which was traditionally performed by the family members."

Bleazey will be conducting the tours through the Poe House and explaining all the details and rules for mourning. "Women, an instrument for displaying family respectability and wealth, were especially burdened with mourning dress and etiquette, since there were three phases of mourning. A proper women would dress in mourning for two and half years. In deep mourning, at least a year and a day, a woman would be dressing in black and wearing a black veil to cover her face. The second mourning lasted nine months where she would wear black silk or crepe dresses. Half mourning lasting six months to a lifetime. In this stage the women wore only the colors of mauve, violet, gray and white." Obviously a certain class has been represented in the Poe House exhibit, both Bleazey and Beach emphasize that the exhibit "still represents mourning customs and practices in general and not a particular Poe family member or another specific person's death."

Even though the exhibit does not represent a death in the Poe family, the Museum of the Cape Fear has researched the family extensively, whose home was procured to become a museum. The Poe house was built in 1897 and local historians know quite a bit about the Poe family in regards to death and mourning. Beach mentioned how "Dixie Poe, the daughter of Mrs. Edgar Poe died in April of 1913. The museum has letters of condolences written to the family. These are displayed on the writing desk in the Poe House. We know that Mrs. Poe wore black as a symbol of mourning for Dixie, apparently for the rest of her life. We also know that Mr. Poe and a daughter-in-law were laid out in the parlor, but we have no details of the funeral."

On Sunday, October 12, at 2:00 p.m., historian Kathryn Beach will present a lecture on "The Cemetery Art of Cumberland County." Beach's lecture will highlight the iconographic images found on grave markers from around the county and mortuary symbolism. Beach will discuss how grave markers have changed in each century. "From a simple stone placed as a marker, the images on gravestones have changed," she said. "Today people want to make more of a personal statement; whereas the people in earlier centuries thought about death in a very different way and prepared for it in a way contemporary culture does not."

I had to ask a question some of the readers might be wondering. Is there a connection between Sorrow is Sacred: Mourning at the Poe House and Halloween being at the end of the month of October? No connection. The exhibit was scheduled after the heat of summer and before we go into the holiday months. Plus, as Beach said, "Fall is a great time for people to get outdoors and enjoy the weather and events. So we wanted to schedule the exhibit during this season." So don't look for paper skeletons in the windows. Instead, be prepared to see a very interesting educational exhibit, attend a tour before November 1st or attend the lecture on Oct. 12.

Visiting the Poe House and attending a tour can be arranged by calling Heidi Bleazey at (910) 486-1330. The special guided tours of the exhibit are scheduled on October 23, 24, 30, and 31 at 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30 p.m.

The museum complex is located on Arsenal Avenue and admission is free. The historical complex is a regional section of the Division of State History Museums, an agency of the NC Department of Cultural Resources.

Visitors to the Museum of the Cape Fear, adults and children, will find the tours fascinating and the lecture very interesting. Visitors will leave the Poe House understanding why the traditions of etiquette associated with loss and grief changed during the first two decades of the 1900s and what was common in the late 19th and early-20th centuries. Soni Martin, local artist and professor at Fayetteville State University.

Comments? 484-8450 ext. 222 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1147&dept_id=483409&newsid=10245187&PAG=461&rfi=9