P. O. Box 13358
Macon, GA 31208-3358
(912) 743-3851
Hours: Monday through Friday 9-1; 2-4; Sat 9:30-12:30; closed on holidays
Admission: adults, $3.00; children under 12, 50ยข; students 12 and over, $1.00--Group rates
The birthplace of Sidney Clopton Lanier, this simple white clapboard cottage is furnished with authentic period pieces and accessories. Items on display include, Lanier's silver alto flute, a tea service, books, a chair, Lanier's wife's wedding dress, and family photographs.
Several weeks after Lanier's birth, his family moved to Griffin, Georgia, where Lanier lived until he was six years old. In 1948, the Lanier family returned to Macon.
As a boy, Lanier became as much at home in the woods of Macon as he was in his home. He enjoyed climbing trees and fishing, and it was here that Lanier honed his skills as a flutist. He often took his handmade reed flute with him to the river bank or into the woods and experimented with sounds to imitate nature.
Lanier left Macon at age 14 to attend Oglethorpe College at Midway, Georgia. In 1867, the year that his only novel Tiger-Lilies was published, Lanier moved back to Macon and married Mary Day.
The cottage is often reserved by the public for weddings, receptions, dinners, parties, and meetings.
While in Macon, many tourists enjoy visiting the small park across the street from the cottage that is named in honor of Sidney Lanier.
Sidney Clopton Lanier (1842-1881)
A man of culture and devotion to his country, Sidney Clopton Lanier campaigned for economic independence for the growing South. He encouraged Southerners to turn away from cotton, which he believed financially bound them to the industrialized North, and focus on the arts, which would create a basis for a new sense of community.
Born on February 3, 1842, Lanier grew up surrounded by music, books, and pictures. He taught himself to play the flute and spent much of his adult life playing professionally. Lanier attended private school and graduated at the top of his class from Olgethorpe College in 1860. A year later, Lanier enlisted in the Confederate Army. He first served as a mounted scout in Virginia then transferred to North Carolina, where he became a signal officer on a blockade runner. He was captured by Union troops and sent to a Federal prison in November of 1864.
While imprisoned, Lanier contracted a serious illness, later diagnosed as tuberculosis. Thoughts of music and writing occupied Lanier's lonely days of imprisonment. It was surely here that he began building thoughts that later became his only novel, Tiger Lilies--a passionate war protest.
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