Stephen Collins Foster was a songwriter/composer from Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania. He was born on July 4th, 1826, to a family of eleven children with very little royalties. Even though Stephen had troubles with money, he still composed his first musical piece at the age of 14 called “The Tioga Waltz”, which was not published until after his death. His first published musical piece was called “Open Thy Lattice Love” and later it penned the tunes for “Oh Susanna”, “Nelly Was a Lady”, “Gwine to Run All Night”, and “Swanee River”. For doing this, Foster was given the title “progenitor of American popular music” for penning those classical songs. Foster was an alcoholic, who was surrounded by loneliness, and due to this, he died on January 13, 1864.
