Founded in 1892, DeMoulin Bros. & Co. is the world’s oldest and largest manufacturer of musical performance apparel. It made its first marching band uniforms in 1897 for the premiere performance of the Greenville Concert Band, cofounded by Ulysses (U. S.) DeMoulin, one of the three brothers involved in the company, which is still located in Greenville, a small rural town in southern Illinois. In addition to sporting events and local parades, DeMoulin band uniforms have been worn at the 1996 Olympics, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Rose Bowl.
“If people knew anything about Greenville, it was likely because of DeMoulin, the community’s first industry,” says John Goldsmith, founder and curator of the DeMoulin Museum in Greenville. Goldsmith travels the state with his presentation, “Three Frenchman and a Goat,” as part of the Illinois Humanities Road Scholar program.
Throughout its 133-year history, the company made ceremonial uniforms and robes, military academy uniforms, graduation caps and gowns, choir robes, dance apparel, lodge and church furniture, and circus costumes. But it began as a maker of hazing props and prank initiation devices for secret societies.
“The DeMoulin story is a great American story,” says Goldsmith. “It started with Ed DeMoulin, a first-generation American blacksmith who moved to Greenville in 1887, a time of innovation and industrialization. He was also an inventor, receiving his first patent in 1892. Ed began making lodge paraphernalia exclusively for the Modern Woodman of America, the MWA, a fraternal order that basically sold insurance, as many of them did.”
Fraternalism’s popularity exploded in influence and membership throughout urban and rural America in the late nineteenth century, ushering in the Golden Age of Fraternalism. According to The Cyclopedia of Fraternities, established organizations like the Masons and Odd Fellows, two of the largest, had a million members each out of a total national population of 39 million men in 1900, and at least four other orders had more than a half million members.
Hungry to attract new members, the local chapters needed a gimmick. Enter the mechanical bucking goat, DeMoulin’s foray into the lodge paraphernalia business. “In fraternalism, there’s an expression that someone is going to ride the goat, meaning they were going to be initiated,” says Goldsmith. “DeMoulin took that idea literally and created their famous goat.”
The first DeMoulin mechanical goats were manufactured by Erastus DeMoulin at the family blacksmith shop in Sebastapol, Illinois, and shipped by wagon to Greenville.
The DeMoulin brothers, from left: Erastus, Ulysses, and Edmond.
—Courtesy of the DeMoulin Museum, Greenville, Illinois
In the goat ritual, initiates would be rolled around on a fuzzy woolen goat mounted on wheels, then forced to hold on as one of the members bucked it back and forth. “The goats were so popular they created fifteen different versions,” says Goldsmith. The museum has eight of these goat rides on exhibit.
In an early DeMoulin catalog ad, the D762 Ferris Wheel Goat is described: “This is the Ferris Wheel Goat with several new features added. . . . About the time the candidate has relaxed and kidded himself into believing that he is about to enjoy a smooth ride—over he goes right on his head. The firing of a cartridge adds to the consternation. A ba-a-a attachment also makes this goat more goaty.”
As word got out and lodge membership continued to climb, DeMoulin’s brothers Erastus and U. S. joined the company, quickly expanding beyond goats to other hazing paraphernalia, and beyond the MWA to the Elks, Moose, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and other orders across the country. The Master of Burlesque of the Paul Revere Legion in Roxbury, Massachusetts, wrote a testimonial saying that their lodge had 46 members and was in debt before adding DeMoulin pranks and had grown to more than four hundred members and now had “money in the treasury.”
DeMoulin’s hazing contraptions ran the gamut from a Lung Tester that shot flour into an initiate’s face during a “physical,” to others like the Lifting and Spanking Machine that incorporated electric shocks and shot off a blank cartridge to a fake guillotine caked with fake blood that stopped short of the initiate’s neck. (They also sold a fake decapitated head.) Ultimately, the company was awarded 32 patents for initiation devices.
“The fraternal orders didn’t condone any of the initiation devices,” says Goldsmith. “They were not part of the actual initiation rituals. They were included to add some fun to the evening and improve attendance.”
After World War I, the fraternal era wound down. “By 1930, they have a lot of different things in their factory and stopped actively marketing the lodge paraphernalia,” says Goldsmith. “Another part of their interesting history, is that for about 30 years, up until about 1940, they made things for all the major circuses. They made elephant blankets, band uniforms, and performer outfits.” Two notable performers who used DeMoulin products included silent film cowboy star turned circus performer Tom Mix and tiger trainer Mabel Stark.
Goldsmith’s mother, Norma Goldsmith, began her career in 1953 as a seamstress and worked at the DeMoulin factory for 50 years.
“She was passionate about DeMoulin’s history and shared it with me,” says Goldsmith. “In 2000, she heard magician David Copperfield was a collector of DeMoulin initiation devices and she said we needed to start bringing some of these things back to Greenville.” Copperfield toured the DeMoulin factory, and Goldsmith toured his collection in Las Vegas.
When Norma passed away in 2007, Goldsmith inherited her collection, added to it, and opened the museum on Main Street in Greenville in 2010, moving to a bigger space eight years later. “The heart of the museum began with mom’s vision to preserve and tell this story.”
The museum has attracted thousands of Americans as well as visitors from Bolivia, Canada, China, Ecuador, Great Britain, Mexico, and Spain. It has been featured on television shows, reviewed by Roadside America and the Atlas Obscura travel website, and listed among the most unusual museums in America, a distinction Goldsmith enthusiastically embraces.
“We are a quirky museum in a small town. Because the factory has such a diverse production history, we offer something for everyone,” says Goldsmith. “Our goal is to educate and entertain.”
