Stephen Foster is considered one of our country’s most famous 19th century composers. He is commemorated annually on January 13, Stephen Foster Memorial Day, the day of his birth in 1826, 190 years ago.
Accounts differ as to how Foster died at age 38. Some say he died in a New York theater-district hotel room after fighting a fever for days, falling, striking his head on the sink by his bed, and then hemorrhaging for three days before he was found and taken to a hospital.
Some say Foster died with three pennies in his pocket, the total sum of his wealth.
During the two decades of his music career, he wrote more than 200 folk songs and instrumental compositions.
Composers in his era didn’t own copyrights on their music. They either produced songs while under contract to a music producer or sold individual songs to them outright, usually for a pittance.
In the years up to the 1960s, school children learned his songs, including Old Folks at Home (Swanee River), Oh! Susanna, My Old Kentucky Home, Beautiful Dreamer, Camptown Races, and Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair among the many.
In recent years, his music is little used because of its apparently longing for the old order of slavery and for his participating in black-face minstrel shows, now considered racist. But he was the first lyricists to refer to an African-American woman as a lady.
A sculpture of Foster stands near the entrance of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, another memorial is dedicated to him at the University of Pittsburgh. The Stephen Foster Culture Center State Park in Florida is located on the Suwannee River banks.
