Timeline

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
September, 1850	Fugitive Slave Law passes
October 4, 1850	Signs petition stating that she will face a 6-month prison term and a $2,000 fine 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
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 122^nd 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
1872	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 paper 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, under the presidential leadership, successfully a school suffrage bill through New York 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 19^th 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. Convention attended by Woman Christian Temperance Union President Frances Willard, whom Gage calls “the most dangerous woman in America,” because of her work with the religious right, trying to destroy the wall of separation between church and state by placing the Christian God as the head of the government.
1890	Leaves NWSA after its merger with the American Woman Suffrage Association and establishes the Woman’s National Liberal Union, dedicated to maintaining the separation of church and state
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	Adopted into the Mohawk nation and given the name, Ka-ron-ien-ha-wi, “She who holds the sky”
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

Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation

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