TIMELINE OF MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE'S LIFE

 March 24, 1826 

Born in Cicero, NY, to Hezekiah and Helen Leslie Joslyn

January 1845         

Marries Henry H. Gage

Nov. 3, 1845

 Daughter Helen Leslie Gage is born

July 18, 1848        

Son Thomas Clarkson Gage is born

Dec. 7, 1849     

Son Charles Henry Gage is born

January 8, 1850    

Son Charles Henry Gage dies

1850’s                        

Writes short stories with a reform theme, poetry and  travelogues for various newspapers. Begins her work as newspaper correspondent that continues through most of her life.

September, 1850

Fugitive Slave Law passes

October 4, 1850

Signs petition stating that she will face a 6-month prison term and a $1,000 fine (about $23,000 in today’s money) for each freedom taker she harbors rather than obey the Fugitive Slave Law

April 21, 1851

Daughter Julia Louise Gage is born

September, 1852

Gives her first public address at the third national women’s rights convention in Syracuse. She attends most of the yearly national conventions in the 1850’s.

1854

Gage family moves from the village of Manlius to Fayetteville. Their house at 210 East Genesee Street is said to be the first in Onondaga County with a modern bathtub and bay window.

March 27, 1861

Daughter Maud Gage is born

1862

Gives Flag Presentation Speech to 122nd regiment as they go off to the Civil War. Opposing President Lincoln, who says the war is being fought to preserve the union, Gage tells soldiers they are fighting for an end to slavery and freedom for all citizens.

1869

A founder of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Helps found New York State Woman Suffrage Association; serves as president for nine years.

1869 – 1890

Holds various NWSA executive offices, generally Chair of the Executive Committee, sharing the three major leadership positions with Anthony and Stanton

1870

Researches and publishes “Woman as Inventor.” In it, Gage credits invention of the cotton gin to a woman, Catherine Littlefield Greene.

1870’s

Writes series of articles speaking out against United States’ unjust treatment of American Indians and describing superior position of native women

1871

Attempts to vote in Fayetteville; is denied

1873

Susan B. Anthony goes on trial in Rochester for voting. Gage is the one suffragist who stays beside Anthony through the proceedings, and speaks beforehand throughout the surrounding countryside. Her speech is entitled, “The United States on Trial, not Susan B. Anthony.”

1874

Supreme Court decision Minor v. Happersett. The court rules, unanimously, that women do not have the right to vote protected in the United States of America

1875-1876

President of the NWSA

1876

Co-authors and presents Declaration of Rights of the Women at the Centennial in Philadelphia

1876 – 1886

Gage, Stanton, and Anthony compile and edit three-volume History of Woman Suffrage

1877

Petitions Congress to grant her “relief from her political liabilities”

1878

Speaker at Freethought convention in Watkin’s Glen, NY; an arrest under the Comstock Laws occurs there for the sale of a birth control manual

1878-1881

Publishes The National Citizen and Ballot Box, official newspaper of the NWSA

1880

Writes “Who Planned the Tennessee Campaign of 1862?” documenting that the Civil War campaign which turned the tide for the Union was planned in detail by a woman, Anna Ella Carroll

October, 1880

After the NY State Suffrage Association successfully lobbies a school suffrage bill through New York legislature, she organizes the women of Fayetteville, who elect an all-woman slate of officers with Gage the first woman to cast a ballot

April 21, 1881

Daughter Helen marries eighth cousin Charles H. Gage

February 9, 1882

Daughter Julia marries James D. Carpenter

November 9, 1882

Daughter Maud marries L. Frank Baum in the parlor of the Gage home

Sep. 16, 1884

Husband Henry Gage dies after long illness

June 1, 1885

Son Thomas marries Sophie Taylor Jewell in Aberdeen, Dakota Territory

October 1886

Joins the New York City Woman Suffrage Association’s protest at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty and speaks. Suffragists call it the greatest hypocrisy of the 19th century that liberty is represented as a woman in a land where not a single woman has liberty.

March 1888

An organizer of the International Council of Women, chairs one session and speaks. Anthony invites Frances Willard, the charismatic president of the Woman Christian Temperance Union, to attend and speak. Gage calls Willard “the most dangerous woman in America,” because of her commitment to destroy the wall of separation between church and state by placing the Christian God as the head of the government. Willard attends the ICW and she and Gage clash. 

1890

Leaves the NWSA after its dissolution in a merger with the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) engineered by Anthony. This National American Woman Suffrage Association adopts the state’s rights strategy of working for the vote through state, not federal adoption. It allows states to segregate and work for Jim Crow laws and white women suffrage. Gage leaves the suffrage movement and establishes the Woman’s National Liberal Union, dedicated to challenging the religious mandate of women’s submission to men and halting the encroachment of religion in politics.  

1893

Gage’s vote in a school election becomes test case for constitutionality of the law allowing women to vote for School Commissioner, a state office

1893

Gage receives an honorary adoption into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation and given the name, Ka-ron-ien-ha-wi, “She who holds the sky” along with a possibility of a political voice in the choosing of the clan leadership.

1893

Publishes her magnum opus, Woman, Church, and State

1895

Contributes to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible, writing interpretations of three Biblical passages pertinent to women. TWB is a major criticism of standard biblical interpretation from a radical feminist point of view.

March 18, 1898

Dies in Chicago at the home of her daughter, Maud Gage Baum