Carl Sandburg was a famous American writer, editor, and poet. He was born in a small mid-western town called Galesburg, Illinois in 1878. His birthplace has been turned into a museum, and several homes in the town have plaques in the front yards claiming that he lived at or was somehow associated with that residence.
While he did not earn a degree at the school, he did attend Lombard College, also in Galesburg, Illinois, for a few years before it was combined with the still operating Knox College. During his life he earned both a Grammy and a Pulitzer. Most of his writing was done when he lived in Chicago and worked as a writer and editor with the Chicago Daily News.
The birthplace is not only the cottage that he was born in, but also has a center for visitors and a is a great place for information about his life. He and his wife were both cremated after their deaths, and are buried in the back yard of the cottage, under a memorial stone called “Remembrance Rock.”
Galesburg has also named their junior college after Sandburg, as well as a shopping mall. Galesburg makes it clear to visitors that the town is proud to have been his birthplace, and show that fact off as often as possible.
While Sandburg would likely have been somewhat unhappy about all of the the attention paid to him still, especially since there are still stories circulating about how much he disliked living in Galesburg, he was a firm believer that learning history was imperative to the furthering of a growing nation. He is quoted as having said, “When a nation goes down or a society perishes, one condition may always be found… They forgot where they came from.”
Carl Sandburg died in 1968 in Flat Rock, North Carolina, where he had spent the last 22 years of his life.