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Poe spent sixteen months or so in Richmond with Muddy and Virginia. That was his longest stay in the city since he left for the University at the age of 17. Everything in the city was pretty much the same as it was back then, except that the population had grown to about 20,000 citizens.
On Monday, May 16, 1836, Poe got officially married (possibly for a second time) to Virginia, witnessed by Muddy and T.W. White and his daughter. The fact that Sissy was as young as 14 was denied by Poe many times, he stated her age as 15 and said that she seemed like 21. It\'s been said that they did not same room the first two years, whether they had any sexual contact is not known but Poe claimed that his attachments to women were ideal and spiritual.
Poe was supporting Muddy and Sissy, which still was not an easy task even though he earned more money working for White than he had ever earned before. Poe\'s debts grew larger and White offered him to rent a house that he had just purchased. Poe accepted without seeing the place and bought furniture on credit. The place later turned out to be too small to fit a whole family, let alone two, considering that White\'s family was supposed to live there too. So the purchase of furniture just put Poe larger into debt and he tried in several unrealistic ways to raise that money without success.
Poe felt uncomfortable in Richmond since it reminded him of John Allan. Louisa Allan still lived at Moldavia with her and John\'s children and the Messenger\'s offices were located close to what once was the House of Ellis and Allan. Many things implies that Allan\'s death gnawed at Poe; his illness in Baltimore, his many tales of corpses, his \"addiction\" to Muddy and Virginia, his threats of suicide and his return to Richmond. Despite Allan\'s injustice towards Edgar he described Allan as a friendly, good man, as if he wished to spare Allan\'s reputation and maybe because of denial of the truth and that he wished that Allan was truly his father. Around this time, Edgar for the first time signed two of his letters \"Edgar Allan Poe\" instead of his normal \"Edgar A. Poe\" or \"E. A. Poe\". Those were two of three letters Edgar signed with the name Allan during his lifetime.
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