This colonial house on Benefit Street was first built by John Reynolds in the late 1700s. However, it is most closely associated with the influential Power family, including famous 19th-century poet and activist Sarah Helen Whitman.

Thanks to her literary prestige and a short love affair with Edgar Allan Poe, Whitman’s life and work is incredibly well documented. In 1803, she was the second daughter born to Nicholas and Anna Marsh Power. The couple would have three more children after Sarah, though two died in infancy. Their youngest daughter, Susan, was the lifelong companion of Whitman, and most historical records describe her as an “eccentric” who likely struggled with her mental illness throughout her life. The Powers rented the house at 88 Benefit from the Hamlin family. (The Hamlin family were interesting in their own right. See the complete 2024 marker report linked at the bottom of the page for more information.)

When she was only 10 years old, Whitman’s father abandoned the family for England, where he was eventually imprisoned for a number of years. He remained there for years after he was released, much to the chagrin of his daughters and wife, who had long thought him dead.

Nearly 20 years after he left his family, Nicholas Power returned to Providence, though he never moved back into the home at 88 Benefit Street, instead choosing to maintain his own residence, separate from his family. Later in life, he became a close confidant of Thomas W. Dorr, and played a role in the Dorr Rebellion, for which he would go on to spend more time in prison. Whitman’s sister Susan wrote a couplet summarizing her feelings about her father’s absence, which is recorded in the biography Poe’s Helen:

“Mr. Nicholas Power left home in a sailing vessel bound for St. Kitts
When he returned, he frightened his family out of their wits.”

Whitman left the house on 88 Benefit Street in 1828 following her marriage to John Winslow Whitman; unfortunately, their marriage was short-lived, as John died around five years later, in 1833. The couple had no children. Following his death, the widowed Whitman moved back home with her mother and sister, where she remained until the 1860s. This house was apparently the site of her later courtship with Edgar Allan Poe, in particular in the rose garden she maintained behind the house.

Throughout her life, Whitman was a fervent supporter of many progressive movements, including women’s suffrage, abolitionism, vegetarianism, and spiritualism. In addition to writing poetry, she wrote essays on these topics and more, and was fluent in English, German, French, and Italian, according to the Poetry Foundation. Poe’s Helen remembers her as follows:

“Mrs. Whitman, whose mysterious and elusive qualities made her seem rather of the spirit than the material world, was by temperament particularly fitted for this transcendental epoch. Yet she could be blithe and merry as well as a lady of dreams, and on occasion she could demand a fund of sarcasm. In the matter of clothes she was entirely unconventional, dressing in a style all her own; she loved silken draperies, lace scarves, and floating veils, and was always shod in dainty slippers. She invariably carried a fan to shield her eyes from any glare, and her pleasant rooms were never pervaded by anything but a subdued light.” (Poe’s Helen, Caroline Ticknor, 1916)

Whitman’s mother Anna Power died in the home of congestion of the lungs in 1858. Shortly after her death, Whitman and her sister Susan left 88 Benefit Street, eventually settling at what was then 39 Benevolent Street in 1866 — that home, the Thomas & Elizabeth Aldrich House, was later moved to its current location at 140 Power Street.

After the Power family, the home was occupied by a variety of different residents. Since 1959, it has been owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island, who own most of the buildings on the block between Star and Church Streets.

You can read our full 2024 marker report on 88 Benefit Street here. You can also find our original marker report on the home from 1961 here.

Last edited May 5, 2025 by Keating Zelenke.