Eliza Poe

Elizabeth Arnold Poe
The only known image of Eliza Poe
Born	1787 London, England, Kingdom of Great Britain
Died	December 8, 1811 (aged 23–24) Richmond, Virginia, United States
Resting place	St. John's Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1796–1811
Spouse(s)	Charles Hopkins (1802-1805; his death) David Poe, Jr. (1806-1811; her death)
Children	William Henry Leonard Poe Edgar Allan Poe Rosalie Mackenzie Poe
Parent(s)	Henry Arnold Elizabeth Arnold

Elizabeth "Eliza" Arnold Hopkins Poe (1787 – December 8, 1811) was an English-born American actress and the mother of the American author Edgar Allan Poe.

Eliza Arnold was born to Henry and Elizabeth Arnold in London in the spring of 1787. Her mother was a stage actress in London from 1791 to 1795. Henry died in 1789 and, in November 1795, only mother and daughter sailed from England to the United States, arriving in Boston, Massachusetts on January 3, 1796.

Eliza debuted on the Boston stage at the age of nine, only three months after her arrival in the United States. She played a character named Biddy Blair in David Garrick's farce Miss in Her Teens and was praised in the Portland Herald: "Miss Arnold, in Miss Biddy, exceeded all praise.. Although a miss of only nine years old, her powers as an Actress will do credit to any of her sex of maturer age". Later that year, Elizabeth married a musician named Charles Tubbs, a man who had sailed with the Arnolds from England. The small family joined with a manager named Mr. Edgar to form a theater troupe called the Charleston Comedians. Elizabeth, Eliza's mother, died sometime while this troupe was traveling through North Carolina. Little is known about her death but she disappears from theatrical records in 1798 and it is presumed she died shortly after.

After her mother's death, Eliza stayed with the theater troupe. She followed the tradition at the time for actors to travel from city to city to perform for as long as several months before moving on. The actors, theaters, and audiences had a wide range of sophistication. One of the most impressive venues at which Eliza performed was the Chestnut Street Theater near Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which seated two thousand. Over the course of her career, Eliza played some 300 parts, as well as choral and dancing roles, including William Shakespeare characters Juliet Capulet and Ophelia.