Yes, today’s Mystery photo is a train station…but where? Try to figure it out and send your idea to ebrack@2gmail.com and include your hometown.
George Graf of Palmyra, Va., recognized the home south of Lynn, N.C., in Polk County where Georgia poet Sidney Lanier died. Lake Lanier is named for him, primarily because of his rambling poem, The Song of the Chattahoochee. The photo was taken by Andy Brack of Charleston, S.C.
Graf writes: “Poet, author, musician, soldier—Sidney Lanier was one of the south’s most prolific minstrels. Lanier only spent his twilight years in North Carolina. Sidney Clopton Lanier (1842-1881) was born in Macon, Ga., to Robert and Mary Jane Lanier on February 3, 1842. Lanier grew to adolescence in an environment where an appreciation for the fine arts was cultivated. He graduated from Oglethorpe University in 1860, and the following year enlisted with his brother Clifford in Company C, 2nd Battalion Georgia Infantry. In 1864 he was captured and held as a prisoner of war for four months in Maryland, during which time he contracted the debilitating tuberculosis that plagued him for the rest of his life.
“After the war, Lanier found little success in his professional pursuits. Having contracted an illness upon returning to Macon after his release in early 1865, he struggled through intermittent bouts of disease and a constant lack of interest in law, for which he was formally trained.
“Finally, knowing that illness would claim his life sooner rather than later, Lanier became an accomplished flutist, serving in the Peabody Symphony and Baltimore Orchestra, and lectured in English literature at The Johns Hopkins University. All the while, he published several books and poems. In 1881 he moved to Asheville, North Carolina, moving again to Lynn in Polk County soon thereafter. It was in Lynn where he wrote his last poems, and succumbed to his illness on September 7, 1881.
“While he pursued many interests, Lanier was foremost a poet, and the works for which he is best remembered deal with nature. “The Marshes of Glynn” and “Sunrise” were inspired by memories of his native Georgia. The house he occupied in Lynn still stands, along with a library that bears his name in nearby Tryon. Lanier was immortalized in stone within the Duke Chapel in Durham, as one of the three “Great Men of the South.””
Also recognizing the photo were Allan Peel of San Antonio, Tex. and Susan McBrayer of Sugar Hill.
- SHARE A MYSTERY PHOTO: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: ebrack2@gmail.com and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
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