The Underground Railroad Room

Her family home was a station on the Underground Railroad and her father, Hezekiah Joslyn, was a noted abolitionist. Editor of an anti-slavery newspaper, he was a founder of the first anti-slavery political party, the Liberty Party. Matilda early became an active abolitionist, circulating anti-slavery petitions during her childhood and continuing her anti-slavery activity until the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crimes. 

It’s no wonder, then, that Matilda and her husband, Henry, were willing to risk six months in jail and thousands of dollars in fines for sheltering freedom takers.

Gage explained: One of the proudest acts of my life; one that I look back upon with most satisfaction is that when Rev. Mr. Loguen [Syracuse conductor of the Underground Railroad] …went to the village of my residence to ascertain the names of those upon whom run-away slaves might depend for aid and comfort on the way to Canada, I was one of the two solitary persons who gave him their names. Myself and one gentleman of Fayetteville, were the only two persons who dared thus publicly defy ‘the law’ of the land, and for humanity’s sake rendered ourselves liable to fine and imprisonment in the county jail, for the crime of feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the oppressed, and helping the black slaves on to freedom.

Enslavement didn’t end with the Thirteenth Amendment, Gage recognized, and in her 1893 masterpiece, Woman Church and State, she exposed the fact that in the United States, young women and children whttps://websites.godaddy.com/the-oz-family-parlor-room-1ere enslaved in sex trafficking. 

Woman Church and State, is available through our online store and in our Gift Shop. 

Where did the freedom takers stay in the Gage Home? We don’t know for sure. Basements and attics were used as hiding places. Sometimes they hid in plain sight. We have created a hidden space in the Underground Railroad Room to demonstrate how they sometimes concealed themselves in a space behind a bookcase. 

The Gage Home has been designated an official Underground Railroad site by New York State and the National Network to Freedom.