CHARLESTON GOTHIC Episode 4: Tekeli

The Charleston Library Society has survived fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and war—emerging each time with its treasures intact. Among those treasures: the world's most complete archive of Charleston newspapers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In this episode, we enter the stacks where a ghost named Hinson is said to wander, where Henry Timrod's blood-stained manuscript bears witness to a poet's final days, and where a century-old scholarly article waited decades for someone to understand what it revealed.

What was Edgar Allan Poe really searching for when he visited Charleston's archives during his time at Fort Moultrie? For over a hundred years, the legend said he came looking for pirate treasure—the buried gold that would inspire "The Gold-Bug." But a 1922 discovery by a Texas scholar suggested something far more personal.

Following threads that connect the Poetry Society of South Carolina, a Harvard-trained philologist, and the vanished stage of the Charleston Theatre, we trace Poe's footsteps to a secret hidden in plain sight—one that may unlock the strangest passage he ever wrote.

The answer lies where it has always been: in the newspapers, in the archives, in the advertisements for a play called Tekeli.

Sources:

Books

- Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1926)

- Allen, Hervey and DuBose Heyward. Carolina Chansons (1922)

- Allen, Hervey and Thomas Ollive Mabbott. Poe's Brother: The Life and Poetry of William Henry Leonard Poe (1926)

- Downey, Christopher Byrd. Edgar Allan Poe's Charleston (2020)

- Kopley, Richard. Edgar Allan Poe: A Life (2025)

- Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed. Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1: Poems (Harvard University Press, 1969)

- Poe, Edgar Allan. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)

- Ravenel, Beatrice Witte. The Arrow of Lightning (1926)

Academic Articles

- Law, Robert Adger. "A Source for 'Annabel Lee'" Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 21 (April 1922)

- Peeples, Scott and Michelle Van Parys. "Unburied Treasure: Edgar Allan Poe in the South Carolina Lowcountry." Southern Cultures (2016)

Newspapers & Periodicals

- Charleston Courier (December 4, 1807)

- Charleston Courier (March 22, 1811)

- Charleston Mercury (2011)

- News and Courier (February 6, 1889)

- News and Courier (1938)

- Southern Patriot (July 25, 1833)

- Russell's Magazine

- Southern Literary Messenger

- Texas Review / Southwest Review

Archival & Primary Sources

- Charleston Library Society archives

- Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 21 — inscribed "Gift of author, Oct. 1934"

- Surveyor's plat for Captain William C. Hammer (February 16, 1867)

- Affidavit dated September 5, 1745 (Cid Campeador treasure deposition)

Plays

- Hook, Theodore Edward (libretto) and James Hook (music). Tekeli; or, The Siege of Montgatz

Television

- "Time Enough at Last." The Twilight Zone (1959)

Reference Works

- South Carolina Encyclopedia (entry on Henry Timrod)

Interviews & Personal Communications

- Christopher Byrd Downey (conversation at Owlbear Café)

- Danielle Cox, Digital Historian, Charleston Library Society

- Scott Peeples, phone interview