By - Harry Bulkeley

"I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women gave me a song and a slogan."

"The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart."

"On the Cedar Fork Creek of Knox County

I know how the fingers of late October

Loosen the hazelnuts."

Carl Sandburg is probably the only Forgottonia poet who is more famous than Edgar Lee Masters. He received three Pulitzer prizes, one for his multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln and two for his poetry.

Lyndon Johnson said, "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America.” On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg spoke before a joint session of the United States Congress.

In addition to his poetry, Sandburg was recognized for his biography of Abraham Lincoln . He said that his interest in Lincoln began in Galesburg when he walked by Old Main at Knox College where Lincoln had debated Douglas.

Historians have long been frustrated because Sandburg included no footnotes or references for the stories he recounted in his books. For a long time, scholars dismissed his work as merely a collection of gossip and fables about Abe. But, a few years ago, a professor at Knox told me that occasionally some solid documentation is found which supports one of Sandburg's stories leading to the conclusion that he may have had corroborating evidence that he just didn't tell us about.

That’s entirely possible because Sandburg’s last home in Flat Rock, North Carolina, now a National Historic site, looks like he has just stepped away for a moment. The floor and shelves are crowded with books and clippings and letters, many of which are yet to be catalogued. Who knows what historic treasures are lying there waiting to be discovered?

Sandburg never forgot his Forgottonia roots and wrote often about his memories and impressions of life out here on the prairie. When he died, his ashes were placed under Remembrance Rock behind the house on 3d Street in Galesburg where he was born.

There is another author with roots in Forgottonia. Chances are you've never heard of him but you may have read or seen some of his writings. Jack Finney graduated from Knox College in Galesburg and went on to a prolific writing career.

Probably his most famous story is "The Body Snatchers" which was made into the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" at least twice. He also wrote the stories for the movie "Good Neighbor Sam" which starred Jack Lemon and "Assault on a Queen" starring Frank Sinatra.

His stories were also featured in magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers and others. If you haven't read him, you should give yourself a treat and get one of his books from the library.

Finney never forgot his Forgottonian Roots. "The Third Level" is about a man who finds a door in Grand Central Station in New York which, iwhen he goes through it, takes him to 941 Willard Street in Galesburg...in 1894!

My favorite of his stories is "I Love Galesburg in the Springtime". In it, there are a series of events where Galesburg's past fights to preserve its history. I'll leave the rest for you to read but there is a section of the story that speaks to me.

"So there's my trouble, if trouble it is: I'm in love with a town, in love with a handful of Main Street buildings that were built in the last century and don't look much different, except for the modernized storefronts, from the way they do in the old photographs. Look at their upper stories, as I always do when walking along Main, at the tall slim windows with the rounded tops, and maybe, just maybe, you're seeing at least one of the buildings Abraham Lincoln saw when he was in Galesburg.”

There are Southern authors, New England authors, Western authors. Every section of the country has contributed to the rich heritage of American literature. Certainly, Masters and Sandburg and Finney have added the mark of Forgottonia to our nation’s catalog.

Forgottonia’s Literary Voices

The Poetry of Small-Town America