Lucy Logan Desha
Kentucky Post, Thursday, 23 April 1903, page 5
OFFERING TO BE MADE-The gold and silver offering for the benefit of the Central Christian Church i Newport will be given Thursday night at the church, Sixth and Monroe Streets. In the musicale, Mrs. Josephine DeMoss Pearce, soprano; Miss Lucy Desha and Miss Ice DeMoss, piano; Miss Jennie F Walsh, reading; Theo Hahn Jr. violin, Joseph Shaw, baritone and Arthur Henkle, accompanist.
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Kentucky Post, Thursday, 7 May 1903, page 5
NEWPORT SOCIETY-Miss Lucy Logan Desha, voice and Miss Anabel Hazelwood, violin, assisted by Charles A Gardiner, piano, entertained at the Burlington Hotel Wednesday, May 6, with a musical.
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Kentucky Post, Friday, 8 May 1903, page 5
NEWPORT SOCIETY-Miss Anabel Hazelwood with her violin and Miss Lucy Logan Desha with her vocal solos, two of Newport's most talented young women, will present a program at the Cynthiana Opera House on the evening of May 15. Miss Desha, daughter of Judge and Mrs. Desha of Monroe Street, has spent much time studying under Signor Lino Mattioli.
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Kentucky Post, Wednesday, 16 September 1903, page 5
NEWPORT-It is with great pleasure that the many friends of Miss Lucy Logan Desha will learn she has been awarded a scholarship by the Cincinnati College of Music for her remarkably successful work in music. Miss Desha is well known and exceedingly popular. She is the daughter of Judge and Mrs. Desha of Monroe Street.
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Kentucky Post, Saturday, 10 June 1905, page 5
HONORS-Miss Lucy Desha of Newport, at the commencement exercises of the Cincinnati College of Music was awarded a certificate with distinction and a Springer gold medal for excellence as a vocalist. Miss Louise Church, another Newport girl, received the same honors as a teacher of piano.
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Kentucky Post, Tuesday, 31 December 1907, page 5
PERSONALS-Miss Lucy Logan Desha of Tuscaloosa Ala. is the guest of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. L L Desha of East Fifth st. Newport.
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Harrison Heritage News, Vol. 4
No.5 May 2003
Lucy Logan Desha
Concert Singer and Teacher of Voice
Lucy Logan Desha, voice instructor and soloist, was descended from a distinguished Harrison County, family headed by Governor Joseph Desha, her great-great-grandfather. Miss Desha's father, Lucius Desha (1847-1917), was a son of Lucius Junius Brutus Desha (1812-1885), a general in the old army before the Civil War, and a Southern-leaning member of the Kentucky House of Representatives before and during part of the Civil War. Two of her uncles, Ben and Jo Desha, were Confederate officers in the Orphan Brigade. An aunt, Frances Desha, married Hugh Cornelius Duffy, whose children, Lucy's cousins, were Cornelia, Eleanor, Eliza and Margaret, all familiar names to many older Cynthiana citizens.
Lucy Logan Desha was born August 21, 1882, in Harrison County. Her mother was Elizabeth Wall Adams (1852-1941), who was from Mason County, near Mays Lick. Her family moved to Newport by the time she was eleven, and report cards from Newport Public Schools record her attendance from 1893 through 1898. An excellent student, she rarely received a grade less than 97. After public school, Miss Desha first studied piano at the College of Music of Cincinnati. Encouraged by winning a piano and voice contest in her native Cynthiana, Kentucky, town, she continued her voice training as a soprano. After graduating from the College of Music of Cincinnati, she was principal teacher of voice in Alabama Central Female College, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, from 1906-1908.
Next she moved to Lucy Cobb Institute,
Athens, Ga. for six years, teaching voice before returning about 1914 to join
the faculty of the Arnold School of Music, affiliated with the College of
From various surviving letters, concert programs, and newspaper clippings it appears she left the College of Music of Cincinnati and joined the faculty of Salem College School of Music in 1923, remaining through 1928, putting on many concerts and operettas as director of the school glee club. Her mother, at age 76, traveled to Salem to visit during Christmas 1927. She resigned this position in a letter dated February 20, 1928, "in view of several conditions over which I have ... had no control," and moved back to Newport, Kentucky, living at 425 E. Fifth Street. Her stay in Kentucky was brief, for later in 1928 officials of Martha Washington College in Abingdon, Virginia, hired Miss Desha as head of the department of voice, and she remained in that position through at least 1931.
Eventually she returned to Cynthiana and
taught voice to many students in the community and county. Lucy Logan Desha died
July 16, 1974, age 92. She was buried in Battle Grove Cemetery.
Information for this article courtesy of Ruby Penn, Cynthiana, KY. and Desha genealogy information from: DeWitt C. Nogues, Desha Genealogy