Stephen Foster
Stephen Foster was known in his lifetime as a writer of parlor and minstrel songs, eventually composing over two hundred popular tunes. Most of his songs are considered autobiographical, and many are well-known today, including Camptown Races, Old Susannah, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair and many more. His composition, My Old Kentucky Home, is heard every year moments before the Kentucky Derby is run.
He is invariably linked with Kentucky, but he spent most of his life in Ohio and Pennsylvania, eventually spending his last years in New York City, many miles away from the Swanee River he celebrated in song. It was while in New York in 1864 that the celebrated songwriter collapsed from the effects of a lifelong habit of dissipation.
He was found by friends after he collapsed while drunk and severely injured from his head by hitting a sink as a result of a fall. Some accounts state that he was suffering from a fever, which was a frequently used description of unknown medical conditions of the time. He died in Bellevue Hospital a few days later, with forty cents in his pocket. It was all the estate he left behind.
Despite the enormous success of many of his songs, Foster realized little financially from them, preferring to sell the rights to each at the time of composition for ready cash rather than wait for the royalties which instead enriched his publishers. Foster preferred immediate payment to fund his immediate expenses, one of which was evidently an over-fondness for alcohol. Many of Foster’s songs still enrich American culture but they did little to enrich him in life.