I picked up a 1946 Random House Book called "A Treasury of Stephen Foster" in Coeur d'Alene this summer. It says that Hard Times is the second of 2 songs based on fragments of folk songs that he heard as a child in the Negro church where the family nurse, Olivia Pise, worshipped. The other was "Oh boys carry me 'long" published July 1851. Hard Times was published in January 1855. The book also says that Foster used to sing the song in a state of semi-inebriation when the poverty of his later years made it applicable to his own state.

I thought this book was a real "find" until I started searching the music sections of the used book stores here in Calgary. 2 of them had copies. Seems it must have been widely distributed.

Frank