Marion Foster Welch

Marion Foster Welch
Welch at about the age of ten
Born (1851-04-18)April 18, 1851
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died July 9, 1935(1935-07-09) (aged 84)
Resting place Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, US[1]
Known for Curator of the Stephen Foster Memorial, composer, lecturer[2]
Children Jessie Welch

Marion Foster (April 18, 1851 – July 9, 1935) was the only child of composer Stephen Collins Foster and, together with her daughter Jessie Rose, was the caretaker of the Stephen S. Foster Memorial Home located at 3600 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1914 until her death in 1935.[3] She taught the piano and occasionally composed music.

Early life

Marion Foster Welch outside the Foster home museum with W.D. Armstrong, a visiting composer on the left and the pianist Mrs. A.D. Mitchell on the right.
In 1914, the Pittsburgh City Council began their funding support of the museum and appointed Marion and Jessie Rose as caretakers

Welch was born on April 18, 1851 in the home of her uncle William Barclay Foster Jr. Her parents, Stephen Collins Foster and Jane Foster, then moved with her to her paternal grandfather's home, and a few months later they moved back to her grandparent's home.[4]

In 1861, Jane and Welch moved to Lewistown, Pennsylvania where Welch began attending school.[4] In 1864, she was joined by five cousins whose father had died in an accident, who subsequently moved in with her and her mother. Her grandmother also moved in at this time.[4]

Around 1870, Welch married Walter Welsh, with whom she had three children. Welch did not raise her first child, Jessie, who was raised to adulthood by her grandmother.[4]

Cultural contributions

In 1879, Welch and her mother secured the copyright for "I Would Not Die in the Summertime."[5] When the copyright expired on "Old Folks at Home," they renewed it for a fourteen year period.[6] In 1893, she and her mother filed a suit alleging copyright violation of Stephen Foster's song, "Old Folks at Home".[7]

In 1895, Welch was living in Chicago.[8][9] In 1900, she unveiled the Stephen Foster Memorial in Highland Park.[10] In 1906, Welch unveiled a model of the statue then being built in Frankfort, in honour of Stephen Foster and his song "My Old Kentucky Home". In a ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky; a chorus of 1,000 children sang some of her father's works.[11]

In 1913, citizens in Pittsburgh initiated fundraising to preserve Stephen Foster's place of birth in the city as a memorial to him.[12] The philanthropist James H. Park bought the property outright the following year and asked Welch and Jessie Rose to become the live-in caretakers of the house.[12] The city of Pittsburgh assumed financial responsibility for the property, helping to upkeep and preserve it.[13] Park gave the house at 3600 Penn Avenue, known as the Stephen S. Foster Memorial Home, to the city of Pittsburgh in July 1916.[12]

In 1926, Welch visited Canonsburg, where the community celebrated Foster's music and shared reminiscences about her father.[14] In 1929, she was Canonsburg's guest of honor in a celebration of her father's work, where she played both her own music and her father's. She was described by the local paper as having a youthful outlook on life, despite being more than seventy-seven years old.[15] After Josiah Lilly built the Stephen Foster Memorial in 1937, staff from the memorial spoke to Welch about her family's genealogy.[16] Fletcher Hodges, Jr., who was the first curator of the Foster Hall Collection at the memorial, noted in 1948 that Marion Welch had "provided a link between her father and the present".[17] In her later years she spent her time with her daughter and granddaughter.[18]

Music

Welch taught music and piano. Fletcher Hodges noted that Foster Welch was "long known as a piano teacher" in Pittsburgh, and that "many Pittsburghers have received their first instruction in the art of music" from her.[19]

She occasionally composed music of her own.[19] Welch and Frank S. Bracken composed the songs "The Whole Woods Ring" and "On the Hills of Hollywood" together.[20] She continued to write and interpret musical scores for her friends "even in the last months of her life."[21] However, since few were found later, it was suspected that her musical writing may have been destroyed.[22] Some say that she was "not able to attain fame of a like order" when compared to her father.[18]

Welch twice attempted to force the US government to honor the contract that was established years before in court. The basis of the legal action was that the US military did not pay for their use of Foster property during the War of 1812.[23] She also filed suit against at least one publisher who was infringing upon her copyrights.[24]

Archived content

Primary source material including family letters concerning the life of Welch are housed in the University of Pittsburgh Library System Archives Service Center. These have been digitized and are accessible remotely.[25] The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also maintains archives of numerous newspaper articles about Welch.[26][27]

Philanthropic activities

On September 12, 1900 Welch unveiled one of the first monuments created to commemorate her father.[28] She appeared at one of many commemorative events as far away as Kentucky where she appeared before a crowd of about one thousand to unveil a statue of her father.[29]

Death

Welch's cause of death in 1935 was a heart attack brought on by asthma.[30]

References

  1. ↑ "'Beautiful Dreamers' celebrates Stephen Foster's music". TribLIVE. Retrieved 2016-12-22.
  2. ↑ The Phonograph Monthly Review, Boston., (1926), p. 102
  3. ↑ Morneweck, Evelyn Foster. Chronicles of Stephen Foster's family Vol. 2 Stephen Collins Foster Memorial (University of Pittsburgh), Pittsburgh]: Published for the Foster Hall Collection by the University of Pittsburgh Press, 1944
  4. 1 2 3 4 O'Conell,, Joanne H. (2007). Understanding Stephen Collins Foster His World and Music (PDF) (Thesis). University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved 13 November 2015.
  5. ↑ "Library of Congress". Musical Record and Review (51): 399. 20 September 1879.
  6. ↑ "Public Property at Last". The Record-Union. 26 October 1893. Retrieved 22 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ "An Old Song in Court" (PDF). The New York Times. 22 December 1889. Retrieved 22 December 2016.
  8. ↑ "'Old Folks At Home'". The National Tribune. 18 July 1895. Retrieved 23 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ "The Foster Memorial". The Pittsburgh Press, 2 July 1895, p.3.
  10. ↑ East End/East Liberty Historical Society (2009). Pittsburgh's East Liberty Valley. Arcadia Publishing. p. 100. ISBN 9780738554891.
  11. ↑ "A Chorus of 1,000 Children". Argus-Leader. 14 June 1906. Retrieved 23 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. 1 2 3 Morneweck, Evelyn (1944). Chronicles of Stephen Foster's Family. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 706.
  13. ↑ "Councilmen Visit Foster Homestead". The Pittsburgh Post. 19 June 1914. p. 2. Retrieved 15 September 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Fee, Eva L. (9 July 1926). "The Fosters in Canonsburg". The Daily Notes. Retrieved 23 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. ↑ "Foster's Daughter to be Honor Guest at Dinner". The Daily Notes. 25 March 1929. Retrieved 23 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ Hodges, Jr., Fletcher (July 1948). "The Research Work of the Foster Hall Collection". Pennsylvania History. XV (3): 173–174. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  17. ↑ Hodges, Jr., Fletcher (July 1948). "The Research Work of the Foster Hall Collection". Pennsylvania History. XV (3): 174. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  18. 1 2 "Stephen Foster's only child dies Dreaming of Childhood Days and Father". The Pittsburgh Press. 9 Jul 1935. p. 1. Retrieved 2016-12-10.
  19. 1 2 Hodges, Jr., Fletcher (June 1938). "A Pittsburgh Composer and his Memorial". The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine. 21 (2): 90. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
  20. ↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries: Musical compositions, Part 3, Volume 16, Issue 1, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1922 - American drama
  21. ↑ "The Ogden Standard-Examiner". Composer Dead, 83; Daughter of Foster. 9 July 1935. Retrieved 22 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ↑ Szekely, Susan (2 February 1962). "Will Foster Talent Reappear in New Tucson Descendant?". Tucson Daily Citizen. Retrieved 23 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. ↑ Emerson, Ken. Doo-dah! : Stephen Foster and the rise of American popular culture. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. pp. 310-12
  24. ↑ The New York Times, December 22, 1889.
  25. ↑ "Jane Foster's Diary, 1871" (PDF). Foster Hall Collection Collection Number: CAM.FHC.2011.01 Creator: University of Pittsburgh. Center for American Music. Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  26. ↑ Marion Foster Welch, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, p.4, September 10, 1893(subscription required)
  27. ↑ Marion Foster Welch(subscription required)
  28. ↑ "Stephen C. Foster As Man and Musician, The life story of the Sweet Singer of Pittsburg(sic) Told by His Contemporaries and Comrades". Pittsburgh Press Archives. September 12, 1900. Retrieved 2016-12-17.
  29. ↑ "Hopkinsville Kentuckian. (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, June 16, 1906, Image 1". Hopkinsville Kentuckian. Missing or empty |url= (help); |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  30. ↑ "Stephen Foster's Daughter Dead". The Indiana Gazette. 9 July 1935. Retrieved 23 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
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