Daniel Marquis (1774-) was an American physician who served as the chief physician of the United States Military Academy at West Point during the early 19th century. He resigned his post in 1830 after his children Artemus and Lea Marquis were implicated in the murders of Leroy Fry and Randolph Ballinger.
Biography[]
Daniel Marquis was born in New York in 1774, the great-grandson of the French witch hunter and accused heretic Henri Le Clerc. He came from an upper-class family, and he married a woman named Julia and had two children, Artemus and Lea Marquis. Marquis lost his brother during the War of 1812 and kept his uniform in memory of his sacrifice, and he was inspired to serve as a US Army physician, becoming the chief physician of the military academy at West Point. While Marquis was a man of science, he felt that his art had abandoned him when conventional cures failed to help with his daughter's "falling sickness". After his daughter claimed to have spoken with her ancestor Le Clerc, Marquis assisted in performing Le Clerc's blood sacrifice ceremonies to restore his daughter's health, and he associated her miraculous recovery with the success of the rituals. In 1830, however, the detective Augustus Landor was hired by West Point Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer to investigate the evisceration of Cadet Leroy Fry's body, and his investigation - with the help of Edgar Allan Poe - pointed him in the direction of the Marquis family. While Poe grew enchanted by Lea Marquis, Landor secretly investigated Dr. Marquis' culpability in the evisceration, and he discovered that the coat of Marquis' brother was the same coat worn by an "officer" who had taken Fry's body from Cadet Haratio Cochrane and likely cut out its heart. When Landor confronted Marquis about the coat, and about Marquis owning a copy of Le Clerc's rare book, Marquis confessed that he had utilized the occultist practices to help his daughter, and Landor used this information to prevent Artemus and Lea from sacrificing Poe in the basement. During the ensuing confrontation, a fire broke out which killed Artemus and Lea, and Landor rescued Poe from the flames. Artemus and Lea were blamed for the murders of the West Point cadets, which were actually committed by Landor out of revenge for the rape of his daughter Mattie, and Dr. Marquis resigned from his post, taking responsibility for his children's actions.