Ossian E. Dodge
Life
Born: 1820
Died: 1876
Biography
Ossian Euclid Dodge was born in Cayuga, New York. His father was a mathematician who helped broker the British government’s disputed claims in Canada. He showed talent through childhood and started to write and perform moral comic songs. His parents apprenticed him with a cabinet-maker to dissuade him from music. With the skills learned, he started teaching wax sculpturing at female seminaries. After writing a commencement song, he chose to pursue music as a career. He established a reputation for writing and performing sophisticated comic songs and was a showman reportedly “nearly equal to Barnum in the manufacture of sensational inducements and all the arts of delusion” (Sacramento Daily Union, 1873). He formed a troupe named “Ossian’s Bards” and went to New York City to perform, socializing in political circles. He was elected to the 1851 delegation to the World’s Peace Congress in London and acted as a foreign correspondent for the Boston Weekly Museum. He retired from singing and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, as a music retailer. He then moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, as a real estate investor and became secretary of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce. He died in London, England.
View the Wikipedia article on Ossian E. Dodge.
List of choral works
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Publications
External websites:
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