Stephen Collins Foster, the celebrated song writer, was born at
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1826. At the age of fifteen years he
entered Jefferson College, at Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, but music had
set its seal upon him and he soon returned to Pittsburgh to pursue it.
The next few years were almost entirely devoted to his musical studies,
though he had a living to make. The year of 1842 found Foster clerking
in a Cincinnati store; and during this time his first song, _Open Thy
Lattice, Love_, was published at Baltimore. _Uncle Ned_, and _O
Susannah!_ followed fast upon his first effort, and the three launched
him upon his career. He relinquished his business cares, and surrendered
his life to song. In 1850 Foster married Jane McDowell of Pittsburgh,
and they lived at New York City for a short time before settling at
Pittsburgh. His _Camptown Races_, and _My Old Kentucky Home, Goodnight_,
appeared in 1850. It is surely a regrettable fact that the most famous
Kentucky song was not written by a Kentucky hand. Foster's only child,
Mrs. Marion Foster Welsh, of Pittsburgh, has recently repudiated the
ancient tale that is told of the origin of _My Old Kentucky Home_, but
as she declined to furnish the real history of the song, saying she
would make it known at the proper time, nothing better than the often
repeated story can be told here. Foster was visiting his kinsman, Judge
John Rowan, at his home, "Federal Hill," near Bardstown, Kentucky, and
on this typical Southern plantation, with its negroes and their cabins,
_My Old Kentucky Home_ was written. The story is usually elaborated, but
as it has been set aside by the author's daughter, further comment is
not worth while. It is enough to know that it was written in Kentucky.
Foster went to New York City in 1860, and the same year _Old Black Joe_
appeared. _Old Folks at Home_, _Nelly was a Lady_, _Nelly Bly_, _Massa's
in the Cold, Cold Ground_, _Old Dog Tray_, _Don't Bet Your Money on the
Shanghai_, _We Are Coming, Father Abraham_, and dozens of other songs
have kept Foster's fame green. His beautiful serenade, _Come Where My
Love Lies Dreaming_, is his highest note in genuine scientific music.
Foster died at New York, January 13, 1864, and he was buried in
Allegheny cemetery, Pittsburgh. In 1906 the Kentucky home-comers never
seemed to tire of _My Old Kentucky Home_, and a fitting memorial was
unveiled at Louisville by Foster's daughter in honor of the song's
maker. It is known and sung in the remotest corners of the world. Mr.
James Lane Allen's fine tribute to the poet's memory may be found in
_The Bride of the Mistletoe_:
"More than half a century ago the one starved genius of the Shield
[Kentucky], a writer of songs, looked out upon the summer picture of
this land, its meadows and ripening corn tops; and as one presses out
the spirit of an entire vineyard when he bursts a solitary grape upon
his tongue, he, the song writer, drained drop by drop the wine of that
scene into the notes of a single melody. The nation now knows his
song, the world knows it--the only music that has ever captured the
joy and peace of American home life--embodying the very soul of it in
the clear amber of sound."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Atlantic Monthly_ (November, 1867); _Current
Literature_ (September, 1901). Strangely enough no formal
biography of Foster has been written.