Credit: Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh
Foster wrote "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," one of his most popular and enduring parlor songs, for his wife, Jane McDowall Foster. Foster had married McDowell in 1850 when his songwriting career was just taking off. The couple had one child, born nine months after their marriage, but soon drifted apart, and were separated when Foster wrote the song in 1854.
