Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site

Connemara is an estate of about 242 acres in Flat Rock, North Carolina, where poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg lived from 1945 until his death in 1967. The property holds 32 buildings, including a 1.5-story frame main house with a pedimented porch and Roman Doric columns, a guest house dating to about 1838, tenant houses, and a farm complex of barns, sheds, a milk house and a stone silo. Paula Sandburg raised a prize-winning herd of Nubian, Toggenburg and Saanen goats here, and the herd once reached 300 animals. Sandburg wrote many major works at the estate, including Remembrance Rock and Complete Poems. Christopher Memminger first developed the land as a summer residence, and textile businessman Ellison Adger Smyth later renamed it Connemara. Uncurtained windows, plain furniture, bookcases and stacks of papers still reflect the family's simple way of life. The grounds, with ponds, wooded trails and a winding entrance drive, remain largely as the Sandburgs knew them.