Camptown Races
Wyalusing Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Stephen Foster's title for the well-known song is said to have been taken from nearby Camptown. Foster's residence at Towanda and Athens may have created the association.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Stephen Foster, the songwriter often called the father of American popular music, spent time along the Susquehanna at Towanda and Athens, and tradition holds that the nearby community of Camptown gave him the title for one of his best-known tunes. Written in the mid-19th century, the bouncing, nonsense-refrained song became a fixture of American parlors and stages. This quiet corner of Bradford County thus lent its name to a piece of the nation's musical memory.
Why it matters
The marker ties an ordinary rural place to the birth of a distinctly American songbook, a body of 19th-century music whose melodies — and the racial minstrel tradition many of them came from — remain woven into the country's cultural history.
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Related people
- · Stephen Foster
Themes & tags
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