In 1926, poet Carl Sandburg published the first volume of his biography of Abraham Lincoln entitled Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years. Exhausted from this and other writings, Sandburg and his family left Chicago for the summer to vacation in a cottage overlooking Lake Michigan near Harbert. Charmed by the location, the family stayed in Harbert through the fall. A few years later, they built this house along the shore of the lake.[3] The house was designed by Lilian Sandburg, Carl's wife.[4]
The Sandburgs lived in this house year-round for nearly two decades. Carl Sandburg continued to write, and it was here that he wrote the second volume of his Lincoln biography, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, which won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize in history.[3] At one point, Sandburg's daughter Helga asked if she could keep a cow. Rather than a cow, the Sandburgs purchased goats, and Lilian Sandburg Lilian began a career of goat breeding, and started what she called the "Chikaming Goat Farm." In 1940, Lilian Sandburg won both the "Grand Champion Nubian Golden Cup" and the "Grand Champion Toggenburg Silver Cup" for prize goats.[5]
However, in 1945, the Sandburgs decided that the winters were too harsh, and moved to another house in North Carolina, which is now the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.[3] In 1947, they sold the house to Theodore Yntema, then a University of Chicago professor. It changed hands multiple times since then.[6]
