Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 - January 13, 1864) was an American composer. He was the first American composer to be paid for his music. He was born in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania which is now part of Pittsburgh. His parents were wealthy. His most well-known and successful song is "Oh! Susanna" which was first performed in the Eagle Ice Cream Saloon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1847.
Foster married Jane Denny MacDowell in July 1850, They had one daughter named Marion. The marriage was troubled and the couple separated. Foster moved to New York City to do professional songwriting. He died in New York City on January 13, 1864 at the age of 37.
Foster wrote mainly in three musical genres: plantation songs ("Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races"), parlor songs ("Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair", "Beautiful Dreamer") and Civil War songs ("We Are Coming, Father Abraham").
Birth and family
Stephen Collins Foster was born on July 4, 1826 to William Barclay Foster (September 7, 1779 - July 27, 1855) and Elisa Clayland [Tomlinson] Foster (January 1788 - January 1855). Stephen Collins was born in his father's home, "The White Cottage", at Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh.
He was baptized on April 22, 1827 in Trinity Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest of the Foster children, and was named for Stephen Collins, a child friend of the family who died at age 12, and for William Collins, a family friend and well known attorney.
The Fosters were married on November 14, 1807 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. William Barclay Foster was a leader on the western frontier of Pennsylvania. He had settled near Pittsburgh. The Fosters had several children: Charlotte Susanna (1809), Ann Eliza (1812), Henry Baldwin (1816), Henrietta Angelica (1818), Dunning McNair (1821), Morrison (1823), and Stephen Collins (1826). A son was born in 1829, but died in 1830.
William Barclay Foster had sired an illegitimate son before his marriage. This boy was raised in the Foster family. The Fosters lived in an elegant cottage high on a hillside above the Allegheny River in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh planned and developed by William Barclay Foster.
Ancestry
Stephen's great-grandfather, Alexander Foster, migrated from Londonderry, Northern Ireland to the American colonies in 1725. He settled in Little Britain Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His son, James Foster, married Ann Barclay and moved to Virginia. Their son, James, Jr. served in the American Revolution, and sired Stephen's father William Barclay Foster in 1779.
After the Revolution, many of the Scots-Irish families of Virginia (including the Fosters) migrated to western Pennsylvania. William Barclay Foster settled near Pittsburgh. He was a merchant who sometimes traveled as far away as Louisiana. He returned to Pittsburgh via New York City or Philadelphia after buying supplies for his Pittsburgh store.
He met his wife, Eliza Clayland Tomlinson, in Philadelphia. She was a Scots-Irish aristocrat of Wilmington, Delaware. The couple were married in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and traveled 300 miles overland to Pittsburgh. The couple were among the social elite of the frontier and associated with the best families.
Boyhood and youth
William Barclay Foster had serious financial troubles. In 1827, The White Cottage and other Foster properties were seized by the government when Foster failed to pay the mortgages. Stephen thereafter was moved about, sometimes living with relatives. His mother remembered him later in her life as a boy marching about with a feather in his cap and pounding on a drum while whistling "Auld Lang Syne". She noted that there was something "original" about the boy.
Stephen's eldest sister died in October 1829. The morbid sorrow that afflicted the Foster family at this time probably marked Stephen's view of dead young women for the rest of his life. Beautiful dead young women appear in some of his best songs including "Little Annie", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" and "Beautiful Dreamer".
Stephen was five when he attended an "infant school". In 1833 he went to the Alleghany Academy, a school for the social elite founded by the Presbyterian clergyman Rev. Joseph Stockton. In 1834, Stephen went to a black church with Olivia Pise, a mulatto servant. In 1836, the family left The White Cottage for ever and moved to Allegheny City when Stephen's father was appointed Collector of the Pennsylvania Canal.