Matilda Joslyn Gage biography

Synopsis

Profile

Author, social activist. Born Matilda Joslyn on March 25, 1826, in Cicero, New York. Gage became one of the leading figures in the women??s rights and suffrage movement of the mid-to-late 1800s. She married Henry Hill Gage in 1845, and together they had five children, one of whom died as an infant. She and her husband were active in the antislavery movement, and their home in New York State was reportedly part of the Underground Railroad, which helped escaped slaves find freedom.

Deeply committed to the fight for women??s rights, Matilda Joslyn Gage first spoke out about this issue at a convention in the 1950s. In 1869, she became one of the founders National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. Gage also worked to establish state suffrage associations in New York and Virginia.

A talented writer, Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote several articles and pamphlets to advance a woman??s right to vote. She also published the NWSA??s newsletter for several years in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Participating in an enormous undertaking, Gage helped fellow social activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton produce the multivolume work, History of Woman Suffrage. The first volume was published in 1881.

Beginning in 1890, Matilda Joslyn Gage turned her attentions to maintaining the separation of church and state in government. She was increasingly upset by the efforts of some to create a Christian state. She left the NWSA to found the Woman??s National Liberal Union to advance this new cause. Gage eloquently expressed her position on the issue in her 1893 work, Woman, Church, and State.

Gage died on March 18, 1898, in Chicago, Illinois, at the home of one of her daughters. A strong supporter of freedom, she is remembered for her work on the behalf of many groups and causes, including women, African Americans, and Native Americans. As a tribute to her life??s work, her gravestone reads: ??There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home, or Heaven; that word is Liberty.??

© 2012 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.