Marion Foster

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, USA
Known for	Curator of the Stephen Foster Memorial, composer, lecturer
Children	Jessie Welch
Relatives	daughter of Stephen Collins Foster and Jane McDowell Foster Wiley,Dr. Andrew Nathan McDowell, grandfather, Jane Denny Porter, grandmother, Agnes McDowell, Aunt, sister, John Porter, great-grandfather, William Barclay Foster, grandfather

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. She taught the piano, occasionally composed music and published her composition, "Beautiful Dreamer".

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.

In 1861, Jane and Welch moved to Lewistown, Pennsylvania where Welch began attending school. 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.

Around 1870, Welch married Walter Welsh, with whom she had three children, Maybelle Foster Reed, Matthew Wiley Welsh, and Jessie Mary Rose. Welch did not raise her first child, Jessie, who was raised to adulthood by her grandmother.

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

In 1895, Welch was living in Chicago. In 1900, she unveiled the Stephen Foster Memorial in Highland Park. 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.

In 1913, citizens in Pittsburgh initiated fundraising to preserve Stephen Foster's place of birth in the city as a memorial to him. 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. The city of Pittsburgh assumed financial responsibility for the property, helping to upkeep and preserve it. Park gave the house at 3600 Penn Avenue, known as the Stephen S. Foster Memorial Home, to the city of Pittsburgh in July 1916.