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John Duss, circa 1900.
Credit: Courtesy of Old Economy Village
Raised among the Harmonists by his mother, who had moved to Economy in the early 1860s, John Duss (1860-1951) and his wife became the last trustees of the Harmony Society, and then engineered their inheritance of its assets after the death of the last Harmonists in the early 1900s. Duss used the Society’s wealth to fund his own orchestra, sold the Economy farmland and village to the American Bridge Company, and then moved to Florida with invaluable Harmonist artifacts.