Background
Susan McFarland was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, and composed popular songs and parlour piano solos during the 1860s.
Susan McFarland was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, and composed popular songs and parlour piano solos during the 1860s.
She was first recorded as an accompanist and soloist at a Methodist concert in New York in 1860. She took a job at Waters’s Music Store where she met Stephen Foster and began to write songs, mostly on topical and religious themes. Parkhurst died in Brooklyn, New New York
Stephen Foster"s New York publisher Horace Waters printed a Select Catalogue of Mistress
East.A. Parkhurst’s Compositions in 1864. She also provided songs for Horace Waters" hymnals.
Original prints of her songs are housed in the Music Division of the New York Public Library and her instrumental works are archived at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.