Orlando Metcalfe Poe

Orlando Metcalfe Poe (March 7, 1832 – October 2, 1895) was a United States Army officer and engineer in the American Civil War. After helping General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea, he was responsible for much of the early lighthouse construction on the Great Lakes and design of the Poe Lock at Soo Locks between lakes Superior and Huron.

Early life and ancestry Poe was born in Navarre, Ohio. His parents were Charles Poe and Susannah Warner, and he was the first of their five children. He attended the United States Military Academy, graduating sixth in his class in 1856. From then until 1861 he served as an assistant topographical engineer on the survey of the northern Great Lakes; during this time he was promoted to first lieutenant.

Poe's great-great-grandparents were Catherine and George Jacob Pfau. They were of Palatine German descent, and their sons were the first to Anglicize their surname to Poe following the American Revolutionary War. The Pfau family migrated to Ohio from Maryland near modern-day Camp David, where George and Catherine Pfau had originally settled. Pfau's sons Adam and Andrew were noted for their skirmishes with Native Americans in southern Beaver County, Ohio. Both men were known as fearless fighters. The first Adam Poe is reputed to have slain the Wyandot Indian Chief Bigfoot in 1781. The brothers’ exploits were detailed in volume II of Theodore Roosevelt’s book, The Winning of the West.

Poe was a second cousin of the painter Andrew Jackson Poe. He also had English heritage from Metcalfe ancestors.

Civil War service At the start of the American Civil War, Poe assisted in organizing the volunteers from Ohio; later, he was made a member of Major General George B. McClellan's staff in western Virginia and took part in the Battle of Rich Mountain. He went with McClellan to Washington and assisted by organizing the defense of the capital. Promoted to colonel of volunteers that September, he was placed in command of the 2nd Michigan Infantry Regiment. He commanded them successfully from Yorktown through the Battle of Seven Pines during the Peninsula campaign; he next was given field command of a brigade prior to the Northern Virginia campaign of 1862. His brigade anchored the far right of the Union line at the Second Battle of Bull Run but was only lightly engaged. Several days later on September 1, Poe and his men participated in the Battle of Chantilly. His brigade was present but not active during the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg. When the war ended Poe was breveted to brigadier general in the regular army.

As superintending engineer, he designed a unique lighthouse—in terms of location, construction materials, methods, hardships and costs—at the Spectacle Reef Light on Lake Huron. That light has been described as "the best specimen of monolithic stone masonry in the United States", and "one of the greatest engineering feats on the Great Lakes." Poe solved the logistics problem of building a lighthouse on the remote Stannard Rock in Lake Superior with the proposal to use all the costly apparatus and machinery used to build the Spectacle Reef Light. The exposed crib of the Stannard Rock Light is rated in the top ten engineering feats in the United States. Many of these lights were of Italianate architecture.

From 1873 through 1883 Poe served as engineering aide-de-camp on the staff of Sherman, who had been promoted to commanding general of the U.S. Army. In 1883 he was made superintending engineer of improvement of rivers and harbors on Lake Superior and Lake Huron, where he helped to develop the St. Marys Falls Canal. Many consider his crowning achievement to be the design and implementation of the first Poe Lock in the American Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, as it was instrumental in making possible the shipping industry, including steel craft freighters, in the upper Great Lakes. Consequently, it was pivotal to the creation of the steel industry in the United States. Poe's creation was dismantled in the early 1960s with a larger, more modern lock being built on the same site. This new passageway was renamed the Poe Lock and serves the largest of the Great Lakes freighters to this day.

Death and legacy Poe died in Detroit on October 2, 1895, of an infection following an on-duty accident at the "Soo Locks," and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Poe Reef and the Poe Reef Light in Lake Huron bear his name.