Matilda Joslyn Gage - Infinite Women

Born: 24 March 1826, United States
Died: 18 March 1898
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

This biography is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). It was written by Ashley Angelucci. NWHM biographies are generously supported by Susan D. Whiting. All rights reserved.

Famously referred to as “the woman who was ahead of the women who were ahead of their time,” author, activist, and lecturer Matilda Joslyn Gage worked tirelessly to advocate for abolition, women’s rights, and Native American rights. While her opinions were considered extremely radical for her time, Gage paved the way for the women’s movement and social progress in the United States.  
Gage was born on March 24, 1826 in Cicero, New York. Gage’s beliefs were heavily influenced by her parents. Her mother, Helen Leslie Joslyn, had a passion for historical research and her father, Dr. Hezekiah Joslyn, was an abolitionist who made their family home into a station on the Underground Railroad. As a child, Gage handed out abolitionist pamphlets and admired powerful anti-slavery speakers like Fredrick Douglass. In addition to her public school education, Gage received lessons in anatomy and physiology from her father to prepare her for medical school. However, after she went to Clinton Liberal Institute, a coeducational preparatory school, she was refused admission to medical school because she was a woman.
She married Henry Gage, a dry goods merchant, in 1845. The couple settled in Fayetteville, New York and they had five children. Even though Gage faced the potential for harsh penalties and jail, she opened her home to those fleeing slavery. Gage began writing for newspapers in the 1850s and continued to do so throughout her career. Her advocacy for women’s rights began with her speech at the third National Women’s Convention in Syracuse in 1852. As the Civil War began, Gage supported Union soldiers from New York by hosting events to raise money for military hospitals. In 1869, she helped found the New York State Woman Suffrage Association and served as president for nine years. She held many executive positions in the association and never sat on the sidelines when there was work to be done.  
Gage continued her work advocating for women’s rights. In 1870, she wrote “Woman as Inventor,” in which she credited Catherine Littlefield Greene with the invention of the cotton gin. She supported women’s rights to divorce and reproductive autonomy while serving as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) from 1875-1876. Gage was at the forefront of the women’s suffrage movement and collaborated closely with other activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Gage was the one suffragist who backed Anthony when she was put on trial for voting in the 1872 presidential election. Gage, Stanton, and Anthony compiled the first three volumes of a six-volume series called History of Woman Suffrage. Gage also wrote for the NWSA newspapers as well as her own paper from 1878 to 1881.
Although Gage had many ambitions for NWSA, others like Anthony wanted to focus solely on getting the vote and gaining the support of other conservative organizations within the women’s suffrage movement. Gage had certain opinions that differed with those of the conservative women’s groups, such as her belief that the church was patriarchal. These differences prompted her to form the Woman’s National Liberal Union (WNLU) in 1890. She spent the remaining years of her life advocating for social reforms, writing for the WNLU journal called The Liberal Thinker, and making public speeches. For example, at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, Gage spoke out in protest about the hypocrisy of “liberty for all” when women did not have basic liberties. In 1893, Gage published Women, Church, and State, which called out what she felt was the patriarchy and misogyny within the church’s teachings. In it, she praised Presbyterians for ordaining female deacons, exposed the sexual abuse of children and women by priests, and decried sex trafficking in the United States. In the book, she also highlighted groups of Native Americans that served as examples of societies that treated women and men equally. Gage, along with twenty-four other women, composed The Woman’s Bible in 1895, which featured Bible verses about women accompanied by analysis from the contributors. 
On many occasions, Gage publicly criticized the treatment of Native Americans by the federal government. Gage highlighted the poor treatment of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and other native nations in the New York Evening Post and in her speeches. Her advocacy and genuine desire for life to improve for Native Americans led Gage to be honorarily adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation in 1893. They gave her the name Karonienhawi, meaning “she who holds the sky.”  
Gage continued her work advocating for oppressed groups for as long as she could. She passed away on March 18, 1898 from a stroke. Her dozens of publications, speeches, and her activism carved a path for future radical feminists. In the 1990s, scientist Margaret Rossiter coined the term “Matilda effect” in honor of Gage. The term refers to when women scientists receive less or no credit for the work they do in the field. The term pays homage to Gage for using her voice to credit women for inventions for which men publicly received credit. Gage was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995. Her work has invaluably influenced reform movements in the United States.   

The following is excerpted from A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A Livermore, published in 1893 by Charles Wells Moulton.

GAGE, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn, woman suffragist, born in Cicero, N. Y., 24th March, 1826. She was an only child, very positive in nature, yet very sympathetic and eager to discover the meaning of life. Her father, Dr. H. Joslyn, was a physician of large practice, varied and extensive information, strong feelings, decided principles, an investigator of all new questions, hospitable and generous to a fault. His house was ever the home of men and women eminent in religion, science and philosophy. Thus from her earliest years Matilda was accustomed to hear the most abstruse political and religious questions discussed. She was early trained to think for herself, to investigate all questions, and to accept nothing upon authority unaccompanied by proof. It was a law of the household that her childish questions should receive full answers. Her mother was an accomplished woman of an old Scotch family, the youngest daughter of Sir George Leslie, and through him related to the celebrated Gregory family, whose members as mathematicians, astronomers and physicians gave much impetus to those sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While inheriting her fearlessness, her decided principles and her love of examining everything new from her father, from her mother came her historical tastes, sterling honesty of purpose, intense love of justice, regard for truth and love of the refined and beautiful. Although Mrs. Joslyn was in sympathy with her husband upon reform questions, yet her early training, habits and hereditary tendencies gave a conservative bias to her social views, which was not without its effect upon her daughter. While the grandfather of Matilda upon her mother’s side was of conservative political views, her grandfather upon her father’s side, a New England patriot of the Revolutionary War, had not alone defended his fireside against the stealthy Indian foes, but had served his country both on sea and land. Under such opposite hereditary tendencies the struggle between conservatism and liberalism in the young girl’s heart was long and severe, but, endowed with an intense love of liberty, she developed into a radical reformer. With no college open for girls at that day, she was largely educated at home. It was the pride and delight of Dr. Joslyn that his daughter should pursue branches of learning rarely studied by girls, he himself teaching her Greek and mathematics, giving her practical instruction in physiology, and even considering the idea of a full medical education for her in Geneva College, of which his own old preceptor, Dr. Spencer, was then president. Although that plan was not consummated, her father’s medical library helped to mold her thoughts. At a later date she was sent to the Clinton, N Y., Liberal Institute. She early stood upon the platform, giving her first lecture at the age of seventeen, before a literary society of her native village. Her subject was astronomy. When eighteen, Matilda Joslyn became the wife of Henry H. Gage, a young merchant of her own town. The young couple lived first in Syracuse, N Y., afterward in Maulius. in the same county, and thence removing to Fayetteville, N. Y., where Mrs. Gage now resides, having lived in the same house thirty-eight years. There her family of one son and three daughters have been reared. One son died in infancy. Although her husband’s business and a rapidly increasing family demanded much of her time, Mrs. Gage never lost her interest in scientific and reform questions. She early became interested in the subject of extended opportunities for woman, publicly taking part in the Syracuse convention of 1852, the youngest speaker present. Chosen during the Civil War by the women of Fayetteville to present a Hag to the 122nd Regiment New York Volunteers, whose color company was recruited in that village, Mrs. Gage was one of the earliest to declare in her speech of presentation that no permanent peace could be secured without the overthrow of slavery. When under Governor Cornell the right for women of the Empire State to vote upon school questions was accorded, she conducted an energetic campaign, which removed incompetent male officials, placing in office a woman trustee, woman clerk and woman librarian. The work of Mrs. Gage in the National Woman’s Suffrage Association is well known. From her pen have appeared many of the most able state papers of that body and addresses to the various political parties. As delegate from the National Woman Suffrage Association in 18S0, she was in attendance upon the Republican and Greenback nominating conventions in Chicago, and the Democratic convention in Cincinnati, preparing the address presented to each of those bodies and taking part in hearings before their committees. The widely circulated protest of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association to the Men of the United States, previous to the celebration of the national centennial birthday, 4th July, 1876, was from her pen. as were also important portions of the Woman’s Declaration of Rights presented by the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in that celebration, Independence Hall, 4th July, 1876. From 1878 to 1881 Mrs. Gage published the “National Citizen,” a paper devoted to woman’s enfranchisement, in Syracuse, N. Y. Urged for many years by her colleagues to prepare a history of woman suffrage, Mrs. Gage, comprehending the vastness of the undertaking and the length of time and investigation required, refused, unless aided by others. During the summer of 1876 the plan of the work was formulated between herself and Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, comprising three large octavo volumes, of one-thousand pages each, containing engravings of the most noted workers for woman’s enfranchisement. “The History of Woman Suffrage” (1881-87) is now to be found in the most prominent libraries of both Europe and America. In the closing chapter of volume one Mrs. Gage included a slight resume of “Woman, Church and State,” a work she has still in hand. Several minor works have appeared from her pen. Among them are ” Woman as Inventor” (1870), “Woman Rights Catechism” (1868), “Who Planned the Tennessee Campaign?” (1880), as well as occasional contributions to the magazines of the day. Among her most important speeches are ” Centralization,” ” United States Voters,” “Woman in the Early Christian Church” and “The Dangers of the Hour.” Usually holding responsible positions on the resolution committees of both State and national conventions, Mrs. Gage has been enabled to present her views in a succinct manner. Her resolutions in 1878 on the relations of woman and the church were too radical for the great body of woman suffragists creating a vast amount of discussion and opposition within the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, ultimately compelling her to what she deems her most important work, the formation of the Woman’s National Liberal Union, of which she is president.

Works cited by NWHM
Boland, Sue. “The Power of Women: Matilda Joslyn Gage and the New York Women’s Vote of 1880.” New York History, Vol. 100, No. 1. 2019. Pgs. 28–50. Accessed 15 October 2021. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/734937/pdf  
“Gage, Matilda Joslyn (1826-1898).” Civil War Era and Reconstruction (1861-1877). 2013. Pgs. 326–28. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/lib/asulib-ebooks/reader.action?docID=2005320&ppg=291  
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. The Civil War Era and Reconstruction: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural and Economic History. Taylor & Francis Group. 2011. Pgs. 268-269.   
“Who Was Matilda Joslyn Gage?”. Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation. 2018. Accessed 14 October 2021. https://matildajoslyngage.org/about-gage  