Her nephew, Bradley T. Johnson served as a Confederate general, and her brother, Gresham Hough, fought with Mosby's raiders.

The second son, Edgar A. Poe, was captain of the football team, and later served as Attorney General of Maryland, like his father.

[6][7] Poe enlisted in the Fifth Maryland Infantry Regiment, and after over three years had risen to the rank of corporal, when the United States declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898.

However, the regiment was unable to obtain transport to Cuba, and spent the war in Tampa, and later in Huntsville, Alabama, before being mustered out of service on October 22.

Declining to apply for a commission, Poe instead asked his father to buy out his enlistment, and worked as a surveyor in Baltimore for a few months before returning to New Mexico.

[6][10] Hearing that war was breaking out between Honduras and Nicaragua, Poe left Nevada in 1907, intending to join the Nicaraguan Army.

The following year found him with General Rafael de Nogales Méndez on a filibustering expedition in Venezuela against the dictator, Cipriano Castro.

Poe returned once again to his mining interest, taking a two-year break, however, to join an expedition to survey the boundary between Alaska and Canada.

[11][12] Within days of Britain's entry into World War I, Poe volunteered for the British Army and was assigned to the Royal Garrison Artillery, where he served in France for the remainder of 1914 and the first part of 1915.

By then he had decided that artillery was too far behind the lines, and had himself transferred to the Black Watch, a famous Scottish infantry regiment, known to the Germans as the "Ladies from Hell" for the kilts they wore and their ferocity.