Editing Stephen Foster (section)

==Career==
[[File:STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER HOME IN HOBOKEN NEW JERSEY.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3| House in [[Hoboken, New Jersey]] where Foster is believed to have written "[[Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair]]" in 1854<ref name="nythobo">{{cite news|last=Sisario|first=Ben|author-link=Ben Sisario|title= On the Map; Stephen Foster's Old Hoboken Home |url= https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/20/nyregion/on-the-map-stephen-foster-s-old-hoboken-home.html |access-date= July 4, 2016 |work=[[The New York Times]]|date= September 20, 1998}}</ref>]]

Foster married Jane Denny McDowell on July 22, 1850, and they visited New York and Baltimore on their honeymoon. Foster then returned to Pennsylvania and wrote most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Nelly Bly" (1850), "Ring de Banjo"&nbsp;(1851), "Old Folks at Home" (known also as "Swanee River", 1851), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), and "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1854), written for his wife Jane.

Many of Foster's songs were used in the [[blackface]] [[minstrel show]]s popular at the time. He sought to "build up taste...among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.shoppbs.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/foster/peopleevents/p_sfoster.html|title=American Experience &#124; Stephen Foster &#124; People & Events|website=Shoppbs.pbs.org|access-date=January 8, 2021|archive-date=April 27, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220427192658/http://www.shoppbs.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/foster/peopleevents/p_sfoster.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> However, Foster's output of minstrel songs declined after the early 1850s, as he turned primarily to [[parlor music]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |jstor = 10.5406/americanmusic.30.3.0275|doi = 10.5406/americanmusic.30.3.0275|title = The Social Agenda of Stephen Foster's Plantation Melodies|year = 2012|last1 = Saunders| first1=Steven |journal = American Music|volume = 30|issue = 3|pages = 275–289|s2cid = 144617319}}</ref> Many of his songs had [[Culture of the Southern United States|Southern themes]], yet Foster never lived in the [[Southern United States|South]] and visited it only once, during his 1852 honeymoon. Available archival evidence does not suggest that Foster was an abolitionist.<ref name=":0" />

Foster's last four years were spent in New York City. There is little information on this period of his life, although family correspondence has been preserved.<ref name="Root">{{cite journal | last1=Root | first1=Deane L. | title= The 'Mythtory' of Stephen C. Foster or Why His True Story Remains Untold | journal= American Music Research Center Journal | date= March 12, 1990 | pages= 20–36 | url= http://www.colorado.edu/amrc/sites/default/files/attached-files/0506-1991-001-00-000002.pdf | access-date= October 4, 2015 | format= Lecture transcript at the American Music Center Research Conference}} Access provided by the [[University of Pittsburgh Library System]]</ref>