Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898)

Matilda Joslyn was born in Cicero, New York, to parents who were active in the Underground Railroad for escaping enslaved people. In 1844, she married Henry Hill Gage, with whom she had five children. As a young wife and mother in 1850, Mrs. Gage signed a petition stating that she would face the penalty of a prison term and fine rather than obey the newly-enacted Fugitive Slave Act, which made criminals of anyone assisting slaves to freedom anywhere in the USA. Mrs Gage became involved with radical feminism after attending the National Women’s Rights convention in Syracuse, New York in 1852. She worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with whom she compiled the History of Woman Suffrage in four volumes. Mrs. Gage was later the editor of the National Woman Suffrage Association newspaper, National Citizen and Ballot Box. In 1890, she founded the Women’s National Liberal Union to support the separation of church and state. She was the author of Woman, Church, and State (1893), a classic work on the oppression of women.