Kentucky by Heart: NKY native Mary Hissem DeMoss was nationally recognized soprano singer


By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist

Being a “tuneful” place in many respects, Kentucky would seem to be a place of many well-known performing singers, and it is. Some are still active, and some are from the past.

Recently, I discovered a nationally recognized female soprano singer born in 1871 in the community of Carthage, located by the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky. Though her name may not be as recognized as other great women singers from Kentucky, she was a “real deal” in her time, well-received across the country.

Mary Hissem DeMoss (Photo from Wikipedia Commons)

Mary Hissem DeMoss’s career saw her tour with the New York Symphony Orchestra and she was a guest soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1906, 1909, and 1910. Also called “Mamie,” she sang at Carnegie Hall in New York City and also at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh. She performed at many music festivals across the U.S., earning the title, “Festival Soprano” Those include ones at Worcester (Massachusetts), Cincinnati, Muncie (Indiana), Louisville, and at Bethlehem (Pennsylvania). Additionally, Mary was known for her recordings and radio broadcasts.

Looking at her early life, the Northern Kentucky connection fabric was strong. Mary’s father, Captain Martin L. Hissem, was the owner and captain of the Ohio River steamboat, the Tacoma. Mary’s brother, W.T., was also a steamboat captain, and her uncle, W.J. Hissem, served as Campbell County judge and a Kentucky state senator. Mary, of Newport, became the wife of Lacy M. DeMoss, also of Newport, on March 29, 1894, at their town’s Grace United Methodist Church.

She was known locally as a talented singer who performed at special events in the area, including places like the Highland United Methodist Church in Ft. Thomas. She had studied voice across the Ohio River at the Cincinnati College of Music and graduated in 1895. While at the school, she found time to give instruction in singing.

Her first position was as a soloist at Christ Episcopal Church in Cincinnati, but with encouragement from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s conductor, Frank van der Stucken, Mary took her talented voice to New York City, albeit reluctantly. As mentioned earlier, it was the start of a brilliant performance career outside Kentucky.

Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of seven books: a biography of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and six in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #5,” was released in 2019. Steve is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, a weekly NKyTribune columnist and a former member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or visit his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.” (Steve’s photo by Ernie Stamper)

Even with her showing an abundance of professional success, she also focused on performing as a soprano soloist in religious venues on Sunday mornings, including at New York City’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian and Washington Square Methodist. She also sang at the East Orange Calvary Methodist Church in New Jersey.

Here are some other pertinent tidbits surrounding the life of Mary Hissem DeMoss:

• retired from the concert stage in 1933.

• her first husband, Lacy DeMoss, died in 1936.

• married Frederick D. Lyon and they lived in Verona, New Jersey.

• her second husband, Lyon, died in 1952.

• Mary continued to give private voice lessons until a year before her death in 1960 at the Montclair Nursing Home, in Montclair, New Jersey. She was 89 and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.

One source of Mary’s era noted her voice “is a clear soprano of excellent quality, full of mellowness with almost unlimited power in the upper register, brilliant in tone, elastic in quality and always under control.” Another source, a musical critic of the New York Tribune, referred to her as “a sympathetic personage with a voice at once lovely in quality, flexible and penetrating, a taste that seems the fruit of ‘musicianly’ instincts. And although but a few years before the public, she has already reached the very first rank of American singers.”

In a March 14, 1904, article in the Kentucky Post, it stated: “She is one of the most popular church and concert singers in the East, and Newport friends are delighted with her success.”

I also found a voice recording of Mary at cylinders.library.ucsb.edu.

Let me know at sflairty2001@yahoo.com if you can find even more information on Mary. I’d be delighted to hear from you!


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