Symbols in Poe's Writing Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. He was born to a southern family that were in a Traveling company of actors. His father David poe was from a Baltimore family. He was an actor by profession and a Heavy drinker. Soon after Edgar Allan Poe was born, David left his family. Poe's mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, was a widow at the age of eighteen. Two years after Edgar's birth Elizabeth died of tuberculosis. Poe remembered, when he was little, his mother being carried off by men dressed in black while she was vomiting blood. When his mother died, Poe was adopted by John Allan (Perry XI) and C.