Sandburg's Lifetime

Before the Sandburg family moved to Connemara in 1945, they spent their lives in the American Midwest. Carl Sandburg was a poet, lecturer, journalist, biographer, editor, and activist. His writings on industrialization, wartime, and labor reform captured America’s tumultuous social issues. He became known as the “Poet of the People” for his insightful and empathetic portrayal of the lives and struggles of working men and women.

 

• 1878: Carl Sandburg is born in Galesburg, Illinois.

• 1883: Lilian Steichen is born in Hancock, Michigan.

• 1898: Sandburg serves in the Spanish-American War.

• 1902: Sandburg’s first poem “The Falling Leaves” is published.

1907: Sandburg joins the Wisconsin Social Democratic Party, advocating for better working conditions and wages for adults and the end of child labor. Meets fellow party member Lilian Steichen.

• 1908: Carl Sandburg and Lilian Steichen marry on June 15.

• 1919: Sandburg covers the 1919 Chicago Race Riots, one of the few mainstream reporters to do so.

• 1922: Sandburg writes the fanciful "Rootabaga Stories" for his daughters.

• 1926: Sandburg publishes “The American Songbag,” an anthology of American folksongs.

• 1940-51: Sandburg wins the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for “Abraham Lincoln: The War Years." Sandburg wins the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for “Complete Poems.”

• 1945: The Sandburgs purchase Connemara and move the family and goat herd to North Carolina.

• 1959: Sandburg addresses a Joint Session of Congress (one of the first private citizens to do so) on the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.

• 1964: Sandburg is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• 1965: Sandburg is awarded an NAACP Life Member Award.

• 1967: Sandburg dies here at Connemara.

• 1968: Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site becomes the first national park unit to honor a poet.

• 1977: Lilian Sandburg dies in Asheville, North Carolina.