Memminger was named as the Secretary of the Treasury for the Confederate States of America at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. He stepped down from his Cabinet position in the Confederacy in 1864 and retired to Rock Hill in Flat Rock. Memminger decided to turn Rock Hill into a fortress by taking the front steps off of his front porch and boring holes in the walls so the house could be defended. Memminger wanted to guard against the lawless element of Union raiders, bushwhackers, and Confederate deserters that were roaming the mountains in Henderson County. The local government and law enforcement had broken down and were virtually non-existent during this time and due to raids on other estates in Flat Rock such as Beaumont, Memminger made defense of Rock Hill a priority.
From high on the side of Glassy Mountain, Rock Hill overlooked two of the main thoroughfares in Flat Rock, Little River Road and the Greenville Highway. The position of Rock Hill was so defensible that Memminger sent the President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, a letter advocating that the capitol of the Confederacy be moved from Richmond, VA to Rock Hill and Flat Rock. Memminger felt that Flat Rock could be defended for a long time until the Confederate government could be reorganized.
Memminger maintained Rock Hill as a summer home until his death in 1888 and in 1889, Rock Hill was sold to another Confederate veteran and fellow South Carolinian Colonel William Gregg, Jr. There is no evidence that Col. Gregg, Jr. ever lived at Rock Hill but he owned the home until 1899 when it was sold to another South Carolinian and Confederate veteran, industrialist and entrepreneur Ellison Adger Smyth. Smyth changed the name of the estate from Rock Hill to Connemara in honor of his Irish ancestry. He maintained it as a summer home until he retired in 1925 when Connemara became a permanent residence for the first time in it's almost 100 year existence. Smyth died in 1942 and Connemara sat vacant until 1945.
Connemara caught the eye of Lillian Sandburg, the wife of "the people's poet" Carl Sandburg. She wanted a warmer climate than that of their home in Michigan and a place to raise her prize winning goats. Carl Sandburg had done work for the Democratic Worker's Party in the early 1900's and is quoted as saying when they bought Connemara that it was "quite the baronial estate for an old socialist." His work with the Socialist Party also earned him a FBI file from J. Edgar Hoover. Connemara underwent more changes when Sandburg purchased than at any other time in its history. The house was modernized, dozens of bookshelves were installed for his massive library, and the original kitchen house was turned into a three car garage.
Sandburg enjoyed the quiet and the solitude that Connemara offered, something he referred to as the "quiet hush." He wrote about one-third of his works while living at Connemara and also won his second Pulitzer Prize in 1951 for his Complete Poems. He appeared before Congress in 1959 to give a Lincoln Day Address and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Sandburg died in 1967 and the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site was opened in 1974.
I went to visit the Carl Sandburg home about three weeks ago and it was the first time I had been there since I took a class field trip about 40 years ago. Growing up in this area I had always heard it referred to as the Carl Sandburg Home without really being taught the history of the property. I had to do a lot of research for the Confederate history of the property and it is ironic that Connemara started out as a Confederate stronghold and ended up in the hands of a Socialist. The history of Connemara has mirrored that of the history of the United States from the Civil War to industrialization to someone who fought for worker's rights and social equality and was a voice of the people.
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