Stephen Collins Foster was born on July 4th, 1826 in Lawrenceville(now considered Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania to William Barclay Foster and Eliza Clayland Tomlinson. William and Eliza had ten children, Stephen being number nine. The last child his parents had passed away leaving Stephen as the baby of the family. William worked as a merchant and was the mayor of Allegheny City, while Eliza worked at home as a homemaker. One of Fosters earliest influences was his sister, Charlotte Susanna playing the piano and singing sensitive songs of love and loss; he picked out tunes on her guitar (Root). His sister passing away when he was little took quite an emotional toll on him. Neither of Fosters parents where musical, you can barely say his mother subscribing to a literary magazine was anywhere music. Even though parents weren’t musical they still put the children through training in music and poetry. All the children including Foster attended private academies within Allegheny and Athens, he didn’t like school but because of his father’s status he was made to attend,…show more content… He was good at many languages and he would read books of song texts instead of reading a novel for literature class. He was given tutoring by a music teacher by the name of Henry Kleber to help with vocal training. With Foster liking to read; Kleber would have him read song texts and helped him become more literate by reciting them. When the teenage years rolled around Foster had many a friendship of young men and women and they were all from higher class families. As a teenager, he was a member of an all-male secret club called Knights of the S.T. along with his brother. An important thing that was done in this club was to sing at different activities, in this club is where Foster would first be a sing leader and began to realize his talent set in his early adulthood but music wasn’t considered a profession for a man of this