“Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” was entered for copyright deposit on June 5, 1854, by Firth, Pond & Co. The name Jennie, not Jeanie, appears consistently in the draft text of Foster’s manuscript book.
The composer’s niece, Evelyn Foster Morneweck, suggests that the publisher asked for the change but avowed that the song was always known to the Foster family as “Jennie with the Light Brown Hair.” She writes in The Chronicles of Stephen Foster’s Family,
