Augusta Browne (1820–82) was born in Ireland and arrived in the U.S. as an infant. Moving frequently, her family ran music stores in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, where music lessons were given on the available instruments. She began publishing songs and piano works as a teenager, and by 1842, when she became the organist at the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, she had over forty works in print as sheet music, some of which found a wide public. Among her best-known works are “The Song for New England” (1840) and “The Warlike Dead in Mexico” (1848), two patriotic songs crafted for public occasions or concerts. “The American Bouquet” (1840) for piano, which quotes familiar patriotic tunes, was her best-selling piano solo. In addition to being the country’s most prolific woman composer prior to the 1870s, she made a living teaching music and became a prominent author writing largely about music, history, and religion, again demonstrating broad cultural fluency. Indeed, she maintained her independence by living with her parents and not marrying until later in life.

N.B. The photos online of attributed as Augusta Browne (including the one used on Wikipedia) are in fact not her. There are currently no known photos of the composer.