Kathleen Hart Bibb

333 Center St., Mankato MN, childhood home of Kathleen Hart, now a museum

Kathleen Palmer Hart was born in Mankato, Minnesota, the daughter of Thomas Walden Hart and Stella M. Palmer Hart. Her father owned a shoe store. Her younger sister Maud Hart Lovelace became a successful author, and their childhood home is now a museum about their family and her work. Maud Hart based the character "Julia Ray" on her sister Kathleen.[1] Kathleen Hart graduated from the University of Minnesota, and studied voice in Europe.

Kathleen Hart Bibb started singing professionally in Minneapolis.[2] She first sang in Chicago in 1917, in a recital at the Ziegfeld Theater.[3] She gave her first New York concert at the Aeolian Hall in 1918.[4] She frequently performed with her brother-in-law, pianist and composer Frank Bibb, providing accompaniment.[5] For three seasons in the 1920s she toured the United States as a member of the Henshaw Mozart Operatic Company.[6]

She sang for the South Dakota State Suffrage Association in 1917.[7] During World War I Kathleen Hart Bibb performed at benefits for the troops,[8] and for the American Red Cross.[9] She also taught voice in Minneapolis[10] at the MacPhail Center for Music,[11][12] and at Monticello Seminary in Illinois during the 1920s.[13] Late in life she taught voice at the University of Utah.[14]

Kathleen Hart married twice. She first married lawyer and violinist Eugene Sharp Bibb in 1913; Eugene Bibb spent much of their marriage in the military during World War I, and was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Croix de Guerre, and other honors. Their first son died at birth in 1920; their second son, Eugene, was born in 1922. Her second husband was flutist Frohman Murphy Foster; they married in 1927, in Los Angeles, California.[15] Kathleen Hart Foster died in 1957, aged 67 years, in Salt Lake City, Utah.[16]

• Kathleen Hart Foster's gravesite, on Find a Grave.