Susan McFarland was born in Leicester, Massachusetts, and composed popular songs and parlour piano solos during the 1860s.
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.
She and her daughter performed her song "Father's a Drunkard and Mother is Dead" in concert and it became a standard at temperance meetings in New York.
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.
Selected works include: In September 1916 she published "Personal Recollections of the Last Days of Stephen Foster" in The Etude magazine.