On this date in 1878, poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, to Swedish, Lutheran immigrants. Second of 7 children, he quit school after 8th grade and worked a variety of jobs, such as delivering milk, for the next decade. In 1897 he lived as a hobo. He would later perform the folk songs he learned on the road, and compile them into two folk song books. Sandburg enlisted in the Spanish-American War. When he returned, he attended the Universalist-founded college in Galesburg, Lombard College. Attracted to labor concerns, he became an organizer for the Wisconsin Social Democratic Party. He met his wife-to-be, Lilian Steichen, at party headquarters in Milwaukee. They were wed in 1908. Sandburg became a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Sandburg's poetry began winning him acclaim by 1914, and he soon became a successful, published author. He completed his 6-volume biography on Abraham Lincoln in 1940, for which he won a Pulitzer. His Complete Poems garnered him a 1951 Pulitzer. He was a lifelong Unitarian. D. 1967.