Sidney Lanier (Author) SIDNEY LANIER (1842-1881) was born in Macon, Georgia. After serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, he held a variety of jobs and traveled widely throughout the northern and southern states. In addition to earning success as a poet, Lanier received praise as a professional flutist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Baltimore before he died of tuberculosis in 1881.Mary Day Lanier (Editor) MARY DAY LANIER (ca. 1844–1931) was a native of Macon, Georgia. She and Sidney Lanier, the poet and musician, were married there in December 1867. Long after his death she edited The Poems of Sidney Lanier.