Charleston’s Henry Timrod, sometimes called the “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy,” lived in the nascent town of Florence for about five years from 1856 to 1861. He came here at the behest of Col. William Henry Cannon who owned a plantation in the area and hired Timrod as a teacher for plantation children. Timrod toiled in a single-room building constructed just for that purpose (it’s preserved in modern Timrod Park).
Timrod already was an accomplished poet when he arrived in Florence, but his most famous works were ahead of him. Inspired by the nationalism invoked by the war, he churned out a series of heart-tugging poems that allegedly helped recruit many young men to the Confederate cause. Timrod tired to “jine up” himself but frail health quickly sent him packing after a short enlistment.
Although Timrod’s works are almost humorous in their sentimentality when read by modern eyes, he is considered an important regional, and even national, poet by critics of the genre.
Timrod was impoverished by the war and its aftermath and died in 1867.
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