Who was Elizabeth "Eliza" Arnold Hopkins Poe?

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".