Stephen Foster
Illness and death

Foster became sick with a fever in January 1864. Weakened, it is possible he fell in his hotel in the Bowery and cut his neck; he may also have sought to take his own life. His writing partner George Cooper found him still alive but lying in a pool of blood. Foster died in Bellevue Hospital three days later at the age of 37. His leather wallet contained a scrap of paper that simply said, "Dear friends and gentle hearts", along with 37 cents in Civil War scrip and three pennies.

Other biographers describe different accounts of his death. Historian JoAnne O'Connell speculates in her biography, The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster, that Foster may have killed himself. As O'Connell and musicologist Ken Emerson have noted, several of the songs Foster wrote during the last years of his life foreshadow his death, such as "The Little Ballad Girl" and "Kiss Me Dear Mother Ere I Die." Emerson says in his 2010 Stephen Foster and Co. that Foster's injuries may have been "accidental or self-inflicted".

The note inside Foster's wallet is said to have inspired Bob Hilliard 's lyric for " Dear Hearts and Gentle People " (1949). Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. After his death, Morrison Foster became his "literary executor". As such, he answered requests for copies of manuscripts, autographs, and biographical information. After his death, " Beautiful Dreamer ", one of the best-loved of his works, was posthumously published in 1864.
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