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Home , Beautiful Dreamer, Old Folks at Home, Stephen Foster, Stephen Foster Memorial, Susanna Foster

34 WESTERN HISTORY | FALL 2014 By Kathryn Miller Haines

tephen Foster has been described as many things over the years, among them a folk songwriter, a popular songwriter, and an American songwriter. But what many people forget is that he was first and foremost a songwriter.S Without the ethnically diverse population, commerce, heritage, and industry of 19th-century Pittsburgh, beloved songs like “Hard Times Come Again No More,” “,” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” “,” and “Oh,

Susanna” might never have existed. WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 35 While modern audiences question thanks to long, unregulated hours in “Hard of concert saloons, and four Foster’s position towards African Americans Times Come Again No More.” assembly halls.4 While during based on some of his lyrics using exaggerated It was not just heavy industry that lined Foster’s formative years the dialog, a closer look reveals his compassion for Pittsburgh’s waterways. The same three rivers performance opportunities were blacks, fostered right here at home. Stephen that made it a valued defensive outpost during not quite so numerous, the city Foster was indeed a product of his time and the French & Indian War had come to serve was home to venues that welcomed place; Pittsburgh’s unique history and culture cotton mills that seemed better suited to the touring circuses, theater companies, before, during, and after Foster’s lifetime South. The mills—along with the riverboats and big name actors like Edwin shaped the content of his work and prolonged and packets used to transport raw cotton to Booth and opera impresarios like the life of his musical legacy. the city—provided young with Henry Russell who made the city a Nineteenth-century Pittsburgh was a a glimpse of the lives and customs of enslaved destination on their way to microcosm of the industrial landscape of African Americans and other dock workers. via river, canal, and eventually, rail.5 the rest of the . Dubbed the The mix of people and dialects would ignite For a young boy in a relatively small “Birmingham of America” by none other than in his mind complex questions about race and city, this exposure to entertainments of Charles Dickens, Pittsburgh was an established inspire characters in some of his most beloved the highest order not only shaped his manufacturer of iron, glass, steam engines, songs. Most of all, Foster did not just observe own work (Foster parodied Russell in his and steamboats at the time of Stephen Foster’s the mills and workers from afar; his first job 1851 song “Farewell, Old Cottage”), but birth in 1826.1 The city was already wrapped was sweeping the floor at Pittsburgh’s Hope made talent of that magnitude seem like in a heavy pall of coal dust that remained Cotton Mill.2 something within his reach. He did not part of its image well into the 1970s. While The city was a welcome port for have to stay a regional songwriter any more factories did not make as overt appearances in workers and travelers and as such it grew than the people of Pittsburgh had to restrict Foster’s work as they did in Dickens’ novels, to accommodate the needs of visitors by themselves to regional talents. Pittsburgh’s industry emerged again and again providing a wide range of entertainment that Of course the form of entertainment in Foster’s music, from the steamship in “The would have been expected in Manhattan, that had the biggest impact on Foster’s Glendy Burk” (“The smoke goes up and the but not at the edge of the frontier. The first career, and creates the greatest controversy engine roars, And the wheel goes round and freestanding theater opened in Pittsburgh in when appraising the composer today, was the round”), to the allusion to mill and factory 1813.3 By the 1860s, Pittsburgh had several . These performances featured workers alike left frail and fainting at the door dedicated playhouses, 25 stages, a myriad white men donning black face and aping African American men and women, as well as creating caricatures of Irish and German immigrants and the perceived differences between high and low classes. While one might assume that the minstrel show was conceived in The mix of people and dialects the antebellum South, it was actually born and nurtured in the most rapidly industrializing would ignite in his mind regions in America: the Northeast and the Ohio River Valley. Foster was exposed to these complex questions about race shows quite early in his life—white men were and inspire characters in some parodying black men in public performances in the U.S. as early as 1815.6 By attending these of his most beloved songs. shows, and participating in amateur versions himself, he learned several things that could eventually be applied to his own career: the tropes and themes that made a minstrel song successful, the troupes and performers who achieved the greatest level of success, and the value of having one’s work associated with

36 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 The original of this Stephen Foster portrait, showing him late in life, measures only 1.2 inches high. Library System, Center for American Music, Foster Hall Collection.

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 37 such a popular form of entertainment.7 The impact of these lessons became apparent years later in his dealings with E.P. Christy, the leader of The Christy Minstrels, the most popular minstrel troupe of the day. In an 1851 letter, Foster wrote to Christy: I have just received a letter from Mess. Firth, Pond & Co., stating that they have copy-righted a new song of mine (“Oh! Boys, carry me ‘long”) but will not be able to issue it for some little time yet, owing to other engagements. This will give me time to send you the m.s. and allow you the privilege of singing it for at least two weeks, and probably a month before it is issued, or before any other band gets it… This song is certain to become popular, as I have taken great pains with it. If you accept my proposi- tion I will make it a point to notify you hereafter when I have a new song and send you the m.s. on the same terms, reserving to suit myself in all cases the exclusive privilege of publishing. Thus it will become notorious that your band bring out all the new songs. You can state in the papers that this song was composed expressly for you.8 It is the South we think of when we hear minstrel songs like “” and “Old Folks at Home” (state songs for Kentucky and , respectively), but while that geography is evoked, it is the freed slave’s experiences that Foster captures as he writes about a plantation life that is now “far, far away,” and about loved ones who were left behind to toil while the speaker escaped in hopes of finding a better life. Being situated in a Northern state may have also inspired Foster’s desire to humanize his black characters, as he gradually eschewed stereotyped dialect, and crafted men and women of color who were intended to be empathized with, rather than crude caricatures held at a distance by the audience. He expressed such sentiments in a Broadside displaying the lyrics of May 25, 1852, letter to Christy: “Hard Times Come Again No More.” University of Pittsburgh Library System, Center for American Music, As I once intimated to you, I had the Foster Hall Collection. intention of omitting my name on my Ethiopian songs, owing to the preju- dice against them by some, which might injure my reputation as writer of

38 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 another style of music, but I find that still foreign in so many regions of the U.S., children of pioneers. The utopian Harmony by my efforts I have done a great deal seemed ubiquitous and exposed him to tools Society near Zelienople established one of the to build up a taste for the Ethiopian that may not have been available in other areas first orchestras in the U.S., which was said to songs among refined people by making of the country. In fact, by 1841, when Stephen have performed the first symphony composed the words suitable to their taste, instead 12 of the trashy and really offensive words was barely in his teens, his father, William west of the Alleghenies. In the 1820s and ’30s, which belong to songs of that order.9 Barclay Foster, was already describing Foster’s musician immigrants like Henry Kleber and Easy access to transportation not only near obsession with music, writing, “his leisure W.C. Peters opened music stores in the city.13 allowed Foster to encounter people from other hours are all devoted to musick, for which he And by 1844, when Foster was almost finished regions, it also made it easier to obtain goods possesses a strange talent.”11 with his own secondary education, Pittsburgh that otherwise might not have been introduced It is the people who make a city and so became the first public school district in into the region until years later. By the time it was the people who shaped Pittsburgh who Pennsylvania and the fifth in the country to Charles Rosenbaum began manufacturing had such a strong influence on Foster’s music. institute required music education.14 For a boy pianofortes in Pittsburgh in 1815, the first Many of the early German and English settlers who struggled to balance what was expected of piano had already crossed the Alleghenies.10 of Pittsburgh were accomplished classical him with his desire to pursue the arts (while To a young Stephen Foster, the instrument, musicians who passed on their skills to the away at school, he made a promise in a letter to his eldest brother that he would not “pay any attention to my music until after eight Oclock in the evening”), he didn’t have to look far to learn that music, while not an income- boosting pursuit, was socially valuable.15 The immigrant influence did not just shape Pittsburgh’s musical community; it

Sheet music cover for Foster’s “We Are Coming Father Abra’am, 300,000 More.” University of Pittsburgh Library System, Center for American Music, Foster Hall Collection.

Sheet music cover lithograph of the Christy Minstrels in costume, 1848. University of Pittsburgh Library System, Center for American Music,Foster Hall Collection.

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 39 Charlotteby James M. Edwards, Trustee, n a shady vale of Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville is “Oh! Susanna” had swept the nation—her remains were exhumed the William Barclay Foster family plot with the gravesite and brought back to the family plot. Brother and sister are once again of America’s pioneering songwriter, Stephen Foster. “Oh! together, she one row deeper and four graves east of Stephen himself, Susanna,” America’s best-selling sheet music in the nineteenth the stone almost hidden in the lush sod: Icentury, stands out as his greatest hit. First performed in 1847 at the Eagle Ice Cream Saloon on Wood Street downtown, it became an instant CHARLOTTE SUSANNA FOSTER hit among minstrel performers nationwide. A few years later, the song BORN DECEMBER 14, 1809 was cherished worldwide. DIED IN LOUISVILLE OCTOBER 20, 1829 Who was Susanna? No one knows for sure and Foster didn’t say. HER REMAINS WERE REMOVED AND RE-INTERRED The lyrics are examined at length in Ken Emerson’s 1997 biography BENEATH THIS STONE SEPTEMBER 10, 1852 Doo-dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. Emerson states clearly that Susanna is none other than Stephen’s sister, Charlotte Susanna Foster. Stephen was born into a large and bustling family. Charlotte, 17 years older, had a profound effect on young Stephen: she had an exceptional singing voice, she played the family piano, and she sang the first songs Stephen ever heard. When she was 20, Charlotte travelled down the Ohio River to Louisville to visit relatives and spend the summer. She contracted what was probably malaria and died before she could be brought home. A witness said she sang a song the morning of her death. She was buried in Louisville, but two decades later—in 1852, four years after

Photo by James M. Edwards.

can be felt in the slow, mazurka-like tempo promoter of the 19th century.18 Foster allowed easy passage to towns like , of Foster’s temperance song “Comrades, dedicated his piano piece “The Village Bells , Baltimore, and, of course, Fill No Glass for Me,” the polka beat in Polka” to Kleber, and included arrangements New York, where music publishers were “Oh, Susanna,” the Italian-melody inspired of four Kleber songs in his Social Orchestra. rapidly growing thanks to new technologies. “” and Foster’s many lyrical Kleber even provided the music for Foster’s Although evidence of such trips is limited, and melodic allusions to the work of Irishman funeral. Foster’s brother, Morrison, admitted steamship travel may have allowed Foster, Thomas Moore, most evident in his “Jeanie in his biography, amidst claims that his like his mother and sisters, to travel south to with the Light Brown Hair.” Foster studied the brother learned to play the flute unaided and Kentucky where he witnessed plantation life immigrant groups he heard around him and could pick out harmonies on the guitar at firsthand.19 We know Foster took advantage borrowed from their musical styles with the two years old, that Kleber was his brother’s of opportunities to travel around the intent of appealing to a wide audience.16 More tutor. Strangely, Kleber never claimed credit country. Foster moved to Cincinnati in directly, despite family claims that Foster was for serving as Foster’s music instructor despite 1846 to work as a bookkeeper for his an “untutored genius,” his relationship with their obvious affection for each other. brother, Dunning.20 During his three Henry Kleber cannot be denied.17 Kleber was It was not Pittsburgh alone that provided years there, his first minstrel songs Pittsburgh’s best-known musical performer, young Stephen Foster with an opportunity to took off in popularity; he signed a composer, merchant, teacher, and concert experience music. The city’s riverboats and rails professional agreement with the

40 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 music publishers Firth, Pond & Co. of New became the center for abolitionist activity president, Jefferson Davis, made stops in York and F.D. Benteen of Baltimore; and in Pennsylvania, encouraging visits by such Pittsburgh shortly after being voted into gained enough confidence in his songwriting luminaries of the movement as William Lloyd office.24 In his brief remarks the day after abilities that upon his return to Pittsburgh, Garrison and Frederick Douglass.22 One of his arrival in the city, Lincoln said no words he rented an office and piano and became a Stephen’s closest friends, the poet Charles P. of praise were necessary about Allegheny full-time songwriter. Later, Foster moved to Shiras, edited The Albatross, one of several County, “as it was already widely known as the Hoboken, New Jersey, and then across the abolitionist newspapers in Pittsburgh, and ‘banner county’ of the State, if not of the whole Hudson to itself to be closer authored a volume of poetry that criticized Union.”25 Despite the huge crowds that turned to his publishers and the frenetic music scene the treatment of labor and the conditions out to hear Lincoln in the rain, Pittsburgh was there.21 Without this easy access to professional of Pittsburgh’s mills. His ideals must have actually a politically divisive town. While the resources and distribution, Foster may impacted Foster, whose own family consisted city and Allegheny County voters strongly have remained a hobbyist rather than a of ardent Democrats, the party that was, at backed Republicans in gubernatorial and professional composer. the time, supportive of maintaining the status presidential races, the region had plenty of Politics, too, flourished in Pittsburgh quo, including slavery.23 Democrats, like the Fosters, who sympathized in unique ways. Perhaps because of its large Both president-elect with the Southern cause. Stephen Foster’s African American community, Pittsburgh and the newly elected provisional Confederacy admiration for Lincoln cannot be denied, however. While there’s no evidence Foster was in the rain-soaked crowd during Lincoln’s inaugural tour, his arrangement of “We are Coming Father Abra’am, 300,000 More”

It is the people who make a city and so it was the people who shaped Pittsburgh who had such a strong influence on Foster’s music.

Henry Kleber, Pittsburgh’s best-known musician of the 19th century. HHC Detre L&A, Oversize Print Collection.

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 41 speaks to his commitment to Lincoln’s cause. also wrote about secession in “That’s What’s enough of its anti-slavery origins to prompt Foster’s “Better Days are Coming” further the Matter” and satirized political parades and Frederick Douglass to laud it and other Foster cements his admiration for the Union with processions in “The Great Baby Show,” and, songs for awakening sympathies for the slave lyrics like, “There are voices of hope that are of course, tackled slavery in a myriad of ways, and allowing “anti-slavery principles take root borne on the air, And our land will be freed most notably in “My Old Kentucky Home, and flourish.”26 from its clouds of despair, For brave men and Good Night.” The song, originally entitled As a vital transportation hub, Pittsburgh true men to battle have gone, And good times, “Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night,” alludes, in played an important role in the Civil War, good times are now coming on.” its early drafts, to ’s providing war materials and supplies to the These were not the only times he touched novel. While subsequent drafts removed overt Union Army. The Fort Pitt Foundry made on politics (local and national) in his songs. He references to the book, the song retained mortars, and the Allegheny Arsenal was the primary military manufacturing facility for U.S. Army accoutrements, saddles, and other cavalry equipment, all while turning out as many as 60,000 small arms cartridges a day.27 Pittsburgh’s operations were so important to the Union’s efforts that the U.S. War Department feared it might be targeted for invasion, which led to the formation of the Department of the Monongahela to provide a military presence for Western Pennsylvania.28 Hardly a day must have passed when trains did not travel through the region toting soldiers to the front. While Foster himself was not qualified for active duty, the sights and sounds of the war inspired him to pay tribute to the 1920 souvenir postcard of the statue in Highland Park. men at the front and the families left behind HHC Detre L&A, GPCC. with a slew of songs including “Bring My Brother Back to Me,” “Nothing But a Plain Old Soldier,” “My Boy is Coming from the War,” “Kiss Me Dear Mother, Ere I Die,” and others that mourn the senseless loss of life and the empty chairs left back home. He even wrote a song about the “colored” brigades, answering the criticism that African Americans were not fit to fight by showing that all they needed to succeed was commitment to the Union cause: With musket on my shoulder and with banjo in my hand, For Union and the Constitution as it was I stand. Now some folks think the darkey for this fighting wasn’t made, We’ll show them what’s the matter in the Colored Brigade.29 Foster’s music has had remarkable staying power, never falling out of public awareness even as it forgot the name of the composer

42 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 “There are voices of hope that are borne on the air, And our land will be freed from its clouds of despair, For brave men and true men to battle have gone, And good times, good times are now coming on.”

Draft of “My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night,” from Stephen Foster’s sketchbook. The title was later shortened to its more familiar “My Old Kentucky Home.” University of Pittsburgh Library System, Center for American Music, Foster Hall Collection.

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 43 who wrote the tunes. His works were readers of National Magazine.31 Foster’s tunes as vaudeville hits, standards, big band included in songbooks throughout the late were among the first recorded on Edison’s tunes and, eventually, rock and country- 19th century and became part of the touring cylinders, and received a boost in popularity western songs. They are also commonly found repertoire of popular acts like Jenny Lind during the 1941 ASCAP radio strike, when his in film and television soundtracks.33 and, much later, the .30 A music, especially “Jeanie with the Light Brown Since Foster’s death in 1864, Pittsburgh half-century after his death, Foster’s songs Hair,” received frequent radio play thanks has striven to memorialize the composer and were heavily represented in Heart Songs Dear to being in the public domain.32 With each further solidify his role in the city’s cultural to the American People, a 1909 anthology new musical genre, Foster’s music has been history. In 1900, the first physical memorial that consisted of songs nominated by 25,000 reshaped and rearranged, regaining popularity for Foster appeared in the city. A statue by Guiseppe Moretti was erected in Highland Park at a ceremony attended by nearly 50,000 Pittsburghers, including 3,000 school children who were led in a medley of Foster songs by Statuette of Stephen Foster in the Center for American Music Library. none other than the Pittsburgh Symphony’s Photo by Tom Powers. priciple conductor, Victor Herbert.34 However, the statue became a point of controversy for its depiction of a seated Foster with his character “Uncle Ned” at his feet, as if showing the composer “above” those he was writing about. As shown here, this was hardly the truth, and the statue would indeed be more accurate if the men were side by side. Nonetheless, repeated criticism and vandalism led to the statue being moved in 1944 to a more visible and safe location in outside Carnegie Library.35

Foster’s music has had remarkable staying power, never falling out of public awareness even as it forgot the name of the composer who wrote the tunes.

44 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 Exterior of the . Interior, Stephen Foster Memorial. Josiah Kirby Lilly, benefactor of the Foster Hall Collection, University of Pittsburgh Library System, Center for American Music, Foster Hall Collection. Photo by Tom Powers. in a photo of a 1941 painting by Malcolm Purcell. University of Kentucky, Samuel M. Wilson Photographic Collection.

The next major tribute to Foster was musicians) and supported through the was completed in 1937, but the work was the Foster Memorial Home, at the site of University of Pittsburgh’s generous gift of hardly done. The staff continued to acquire Foster’s birthplace, The White Cottage, at land to situate the building, the Stephen Foster-related materials and also continued 3600 Penn Avenue in Lawrenceville. While the Foster Memorial was intended to be a place Lilly’s efforts to disseminate information original home Foster lived in was torn down where Foster’s music could be heard and about Foster and his career to anyone free of in 1865 by then-owner iron manufacturer enjoyed. Those plans changed when Josiah charge. In the Memorial’s formative years, this Andrew Kloman, the house now at the site Lilly, president of Indiana Pharmaceutical meant the creation and distribution of 1,000 was owned and maintained by the city of Company, Eli Lilly & Company, learned first edition reproduction sets of his complete Pittsburgh from 1916 through the 1930s.36 of Pittsburgh’s plans. A long-time devotee works, plus thousands of songbooks, articles Several Foster descendants, including his of Foster’s music, Lilly had assembled an in countless publications about Foster’s daughter, lived in the home and operated a impressive collection of “Fosteriana,” all of work, assisting with productions small museum in Foster’s honor.37 Also, three which he stored in a small building on his of Foster biopics, and answering hundreds public schools were named in Foster’s honor property that he dubbed Foster Hall. Working of thousands of reference questions from in the early 20th century—in Lawrenceville, with Fletcher Hodges, Jr., the collection people all over the world who wanted to McKees Rocks, and Mount Lebanon.38 In included manuscripts, photographs, personal learn more about the composer.41 The 1926, the mayor of Pittsburgh proclaimed artifacts, every known edition of Foster’s Memorial also began a relationship with a centennial to honor Foster in the 100th songs, and countless other valuable materials Allegheny Cemetery, the site of Foster’s grave, year since his birth. Throughout the year that helped to track the composer’s career and including initiating an annual service to numerous concerts and other public events inspirations. When he learned of Pittsburgh’s commemorate Foster’s death. took place in the city to honor the composer efforts to create a building in Foster’s honor, In the 76 years since its creation, the and his accomplishments.39 he donated the entire collection, and arranged Stephen Foster Memorial has established The most significant effort made to for Hodges to be its curator, all housed in the Foster’s rightful position as the father of keep Stephen Foster’s memory and music new facility.40 American popular song and its library, the alive must be the memorial that Plans were altered to allow the building Center for American Music, as the principal shares his name. Conceived in 1927 by to be not just a concert hall, but a museum repository for all materials related to Stephen the Tuesday Musical Club (a women’s and archive dedicated to Foster. Work on Foster. The Center has also continued Lilly’s organization of semi-professional the building began in earnest in 1932 and efforts to research, educate, and preserve

 Learn More Online Find out more about the Stephen Foster WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 45 Memorial Museum and the University of Pittsburgh’s Foster Hall Collection. materials related to Foster’s life and career geography, and creative and hardworking 1 Charles Dickens to John Forster, April 4, 1842. Charles Dickens, The Letters of Charles Dickens, and has worked on many high-profile Foster people. The American experience—and, more 1842-1843 (Oxford University Press, 1974). projects over the years, including a critical specifically, the Pittsburgh experience—may Dickens commented in his “American Notes,” “Pittsburg [sic] is like Birmingham in England; edition of his complete works, numerous have changed over the years in certain ways, at least its towns-people say so. Setting aside the documentaries on his life, and a Grammy- but the same qualities define the region and streets, the shops, the houses, waggons, factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps it may be. award winning album of his songs.42 continue to make it unique. This is at the It certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging The reasons for sustained interest in heart of why Foster’s songs still resonate: about it, and is famous for its ironworks” (153-154). 2 Stephen Foster to Ann Eliza Foster, September 15, Stephen Foster are complex, just as are the they, like the land bisected by rivers and the 1845. Foster Hall Collection, Center for American changing interpretations of Foster’s lyrics, but neighborhoods divided by cultures, still reflect Music, University of Pittsburgh Library System. much like the city that strongly influenced who we are today. 3 Lynne Connor, Pittsburgh In Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh his writing, the songs have at their heart a Press, 2007), 3. distinctly American quality. As musicologist Kathryn Miller Haines is the Associate Director 4 Ibid., 28. Charles Hamm put it in his book Yesterdays: for the Center for American Music at the 5 John Tasker Howard, Stephen Foster America’s University of Pittsburgh. Among its holdings Troubadour (New York City: Thomas Y. Crowell, Popular Song in America, “Never before, and 1953), 115. is the Foster Hall Collection, which continues 6 rarely since, did any music come so close to be the principal repository for all materials Edward LeRoy Rice, Monarchs of Minstrelsy: from “Daddy” Rice to Date (Kenny Publishing Company, to being a shared experience for so many pertaining to Stephen Collins Foster. 1911), 6. 43 Americans.” Foster’s music speaks to what 7 Morrison Foster, My Brother Stephen (: Visit http://www.pitt.edu/~amerimus to learn it means to live in a country that was shaped privately printed, 1932), 25. about Foster and the Center. by innovation and industry, advantageous 8 Stephen Foster to E.P. Christy, June 12, 1851. Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Ca. 9 Stephen Foster to E.P. Christy, May 25, 1852. Foster Hall Collection, Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh Library System. 10 “Philadelphia’s First Pianos and the Lure of Music,” Philadelphia Antiques Week.Com, April 20, 2012, accessed February 28, 2014. http:// Portrait of Foster by George www.philadelphiaantiquesweek.com/2012/04/02/ Lafayette Clough, c. 1865. philadelphias-first-pianos-and-the-lure-of-music/. Carnegie Museum of Art. Photo by Richard Stoner. 11 William B. Foster to William B. Foster, Jr., September 3, 1841. Foster Hall Collection, Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh Library System. 12 Richard Wetzel, Frontier musicians on the Connoquenessing, Wabash, and Ohio: A history of the music and musicians of George Rapp’s Harmony Society, 1805-1906 (Ohio University Press, 1976), 85. 13 Ken Emerson, Doo-Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture (New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 50. 14 George Grove and Waldo Selden Pratt, Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (MacMillan, 1920), 6:334. 15 Stephen Foster to William B. Foster, Jr., “late 1840 or early 1841.” Foster Hall Collection, Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh Library System. 16 Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York City: W.W. Norton, 1979), 215-222. 17 Morrison Foster, 31. 18 Pittsburgh Music History at https://sites.google.com/ site/pittsburghmusichistory/pittsburgh-music-story/ teachers-and-schools/henry-kleber. 19 Evelyn Foster Morneweck, Chronicles of Stephen Foster’s Family (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1944), 2:402. 20 Howard, 133. 21 Ibid., 232-233. 22 Larry Glasco, The WPA History of the Negro in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), 104. 46 WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 Learn More Online Learn more about Stephen Foster the songwriter and listen to samples of his music 23 Fletcher Hodges, Jr., “Stephen Foster Democrat,” 35 Vernon Gay and Marilyn Evert, Discovering Lincoln Herald 47, no. 2 (June 1945): 4. Pittsburgh’s Sculpture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983). 24 Len Barcousky, “Recounting Abraham Lincoln’s only trip to Pittsburgh, 150 years ago The president- 36 Kloman was also a partner of Henry Phipps and elect arrived by train 150 years ago on Valentine’s . At the time he tore down the Foster Day before inauguration,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, home, he was also in the process of openining the February 13, 2011. Union Iron Mills in the Strip District, later the site of Crucible Steel. See David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie 25 Charles Dahlinger, “Abraham Lincoln in Pittsburgh (London: Penguin Press, 2006). and the Birth of the Republican Party,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 3, no. 4 (October 37 “Pictorial Biography of Stephen Collins Foster Part 1920): 166. II,” Musical Courier, no. 13 (March 29, 1930): 40. 26 Frederick Douglass, “The Anti-Slavery Movement, 38 For these and other memorials to Foster in Pittsburgh lecture delivered before the Rochester Ladies’ and beyond, see the section on memorials in Calvin Anti-Slavery Society, January, 1855,” The Life Elliker’s Stephen Collins Foster: A Guide to Research and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New York City: (New York City: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988). International Publishers, 1950), 2:356-357. 39 “Pittsburgh Honors Foster: City Celebrates Centenary 27 John Newton Boucher, A Century and a Half of of Composer’s Birth at Lawrenceville,” New York Pittsburg and Her People (The Lewis Publishing Times, July 5, 1926, 23. Company, 1908). For more on the Civil War, see 40 For a detailed description of the creation, history, Arthur B. Fox, Pittsburgh During the American and activities of the Memorial, see Fletcher Hodges, Civil War, 1860-1865 (Chicora, Pa.:Mechling Jr.’s, article “A Pittsburgh Composer and His Bookbindery, 2002). Memorial,” The Western Pennsylvania Historical 28 Samuel P. Bates, Martial Deeds of Pennsylvania Magazine 21, no. 2 (June 1938). (Philadelphia: T. H. Davis & Co., 1876). 41 Ibid. 29 Stephen Collins Foster, “A Soldier in the Colored 42 Deane Root and Steven Saunders, editors, The Music Brigade” (New York City: Firth, Son & Co., 1863). of Stephen C. Foster: A Critical Edition (Washington, 30 Emerson, 11. D.C.: Smithsonian University Press, 1990). Root is currently Director of the Center for American Music 31 National Magazine, Heart Songs Dear to the and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department American People (Boston: Chapple Publishing Co. of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. Among the Ltd, 1909). documentaries is the PBS American Experience 32 “No Letup,” Time Magazine, January 27, 1941. episode, “Stephen Foster.” The Grammy-winning 33 For more information on Foster’s extensive use in album is Various Artists, Beautiful Dreamer. these mediums, see his entry on the Internet Movie American Root Publishing, 2004. Database website, imdb.com. 43 Hamm. 34 Morneweck, 2:593.

Statue of Foster and Old Uncle Ned by Guiseppe Moretti. Photo by Justin M. Postrick.

“My Old Kentucky Home” retained enough of its anti-slavery origins to prompt Frederick Douglass to laud it and other Foster songs for awakening sympathies for the slave.

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY | FALL 2014 47