Lorraine Wyman

(Julie) Loraine Wyman (October 23, 1885 – September 11, 1937) was an American soprano, noted for her concert performances of folk songs, some of which she collected herself from traditional singers in field work. Paul J. Stamler has called Wyman "the first real practitioner of the urban folk revival."

Her mother, Julie Moran Wyman (1860-1907) was from Joliet, Illinois, near Chicago. She possessed a mezzo-soprano voice described as a "marvel" and had a successful career as an opera singer.

On 2 April 1880 Julie Moran married Walter C. Wyman (1850-1927), a "coal merchant", "society man", and collector and dealer in Native American anthropological artifacts. He lived in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Wyman was quite wealthy; the Chicago Tribune remarks that the couple "made their home in the Edwin E. Brown mansion, and maintained there a lavish establishment of servants, horses, and carriages." They were prominent in Evanston social circles. The Wymans had three children, all daughters: Florence (born 25 January 1881), Caroline (born 28 August 1882), and the youngest Loraine (born 23 October 1885 in Evanston).

Wyman's childhood was not always serene. After 1891, her parents lived separately, with Julie taking Loraine and Florence to Paris to live, leaving Caroline with the father. In 1896 Walter Wyman obtained a divorce from his wife on grounds of adultery (he also charged her with addiction to alcohol). As part of the divorce proceedings Wyman successfully obtained custody of all three of his daughters, who joined him in Evanston. Following this there were two occasions in which the daughters fled from their father, attempting to join their mother. Julie Wyman's brother was arrested for helping them in the first of their escape attempts, and for a time after this they were placed under police watch. The Chicago Tribune later described how the mother and daughters made their final escape via New York (March 1897): they were "taken aboard of an outgoing French steamer by a launch which was in waiting in the North [i.e. Hudson] river. Thus she eluded detectives employed by her husband."

Having relocated her children to Paris, Julie Wyman fairly soon returned to North America, where she settled in Toronto and resumed her singing career; between 1898 and 1904 performances by her are recorded in Toronto, New York, Buffalo, Boston, and Cleveland. She eventually moved to Philadelphia. Julie Wyman died a suicide in 1907 in the apartment of her daughter Caroline in New York; Loraine and her older sister Florence were still living in Paris at the time.

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