The current Prattville Primary School was built in 1927, replacing the former Prattville Male and Female Academy. Sidney Lanier was principal and teacher at that school in 1867-1868. There is no indication when the plaque was placed, but it appears to have been there for many years. The Prattville Primary School is located on Wetumpka Road near the corner of North Washington Street.
Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1842. During the Civil War he contracted tuberculosis in a Federal prison and it led to his death at 39 in 1882.
The following excerpt from the biography on the poets.org site tells of the poetry for which he is remembered:
"In 1874, Lanier published his poem "Corn," which earned him many admirers, one of whom, Bayard Taylor, commissioned the poet to write the cantata for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The next few years were poetically his most productive. He wrote "The Song of the Chattahoochee," "A Song of Love," and "The Marshes of Glynn," his most celebrated poem. An offer to teach English literature brought him to Baltimore, Maryland, and in 1879, Lanier was appointed lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
Having grown quite feeble by late 1880, he penned his last poem, "Sunrise," and months later, on September 7, 1881, the poet died in Lynn, North Carolina, with his wife and family at his side, at the age of thirty-nine.
By his wife’s efforts following his death, Sidney Lanier’s poems were collected and published in a single volume, from which his readership grew. A fondness for the poet seems to exist most deeply in the South, where he is commemorated by Lake Lanier in central Georgia, and the Sidney Lanier Bridge, the state’s largest cable-stayed bridge, which opened in 2003 in Brunswick, Georgia." source: (
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The plaque itself reads:
Sidney Lanier
Musician - Poet - Patriot - Seer
Beloved Teacher of Prattville Acedemy on this site 1867 -1868
whose memory will be forever
cherished by people of prattville, Ala.
whom he loved and served
Erected by Merrill E. Pratt Chapt., U.D.C.