Columbian Exposition Lobster

The year is 1893 and the DeMoss Family Lyric Bards, a band from Oregon, is in Chicago where they have been asked to play at the Columbian Exposition. At that time the DeMoss Lyric Bards consisted of father James DeMoss and four of his children: George, Henry, Lizzie, and Minnie. They played a total of 41 instruments.  George was famous for playing two cornets at the same time.

James, Minnie, Henry, Lizzie, and George DeMoss, 1895
 Photographed near their home in DeMoss Springs,
Sherman County, Oregon

Henry, Minnie, Lizzie and George DeMoss, 1893

The Exposition was to be a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the New World. Chicago city leaders also hoped to show how the city had recovered from the great Chicago Fire of 1871. Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed the layout of the 690-acre site.
Daniel Burnham hired a number of well-known architects to design the 14 main exhibit buildings in the classical and Beaux-Arts styles.  The buildings, centered around a large pool or lagoon, included halls devoted to different subjects:  agriculture, mining, electricity, machinery, transportation, fisheries, horticulture, forestry, anthropology, and manufactures and liberal arts.  There was also an administration building and a woman's building. As the buildings were to be temporary, they were not made of stone.  The outsides were coated with a mixture of plaster, cement and jute known as staff and were painted white.  Street lights were installed and gave an extreme gleam to these white buildings, leading to site being called the White City.

One of the buildings that attracted a lot of attention was the Fisheries Building designed by Chicago architect, Henry Ives Cobb.  A central portion contained the main exhibits and was flanked by pavilions, one of which contained a large aquarium filled with salt water trucked in from the Atlantic Ocean.

What people found the most remarkable was the decoration on the columns and arches. Winding around each of the pillars were rows of different sea creatures: turtles, crabs, lobsters, starfish, frogs, and man kinds of fish. Rows of sea creatures also decorated the arches and panels on the side of the building.

In addition to strolling amid these white buildings, visitors also could listen to a wide variety of musical performances.  The DeMoss Family Lyric Bards performed daily concerts in the Horticulture Hall. They also performed in some of the other halls and state buildings for a total of 520 engagements. The fair had many days celebrating different states and the DeMoss family composed a song for each, for a total of 44 songs.

When the fair was over, most of the buildings were demolished. The exterior decorations from the Fisheries Building were saved and sold as souvenirs. The DeMoss Family acquired this lobster from the building and brought it back to Oregon and eventually it became part of the Benton County Historical Society’s artifact collection. A 3-d model of the lobster is available at the Sketchfab website: https://skfb.ly/NvTU. 

Visit https://skfb.ly/NvTU to see details of this artifact

After Minnie died in 1897, the family added P. Waldo Davis and his sister Aurelia to the band.  Waldo Davis and Lizzie DeMoss later married. In 1910, they separated from the DeMoss Entertainers.  Waldo toured playing the chimes while Lizzie focused on raising their children, Herschel and Arvilla. In 1916, Lizzie was offered the position as head of the violin department at Philomath College which she held until 1921. Both P. Waldo and son Herschel attended Philomath College, with Herschel graduating in 1920.

Philomath College faculty in 1918. 
Lizzie DeMoss Davis is at the far right

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon