Typewriter, Underwood No. 5

Image of typewriter owned by Carl Sandburg.
Manufactured and used circa 1920s, belonged to Carl Sandburg

This typewriter belonged to Illinois’ own Carl Sandburg, nationally known author, poet, and journalist, while he lived in Elmhurst from 1919 to 1930. Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1878 and eventually moved to the Chicago area to begin a career in journalism. He wrote for the Chicago Daily News, reviewing movies and covering labor news. The Sandburg family moved to Elmhurst in 1919, the same year he won his first of three Pulitzer Prizes. During his Elmhurst years, Sandburg wrote his first children’s book, Rootabaga Stories. Two volumes of his Abraham Lincoln biography, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, were published in 1926, and his collection of folksongs, The American Songbag, was released the following year. Carl Sandburg left Elmhurst for Michigan in 1930, but he had already cemented his status as one of the Prairie State’s greatest literary minds.

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