Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage was born on March 24, 1826 in Cicero, NY to a progressive abolitionist family. She was born into an era of turbulent change in Upstate NY. The year before she was born the Erie Canal opened up this area to travelers, commerce, and growth. Just one year after her birth, slavery was abolished in New York State.

Matilda’s parents, Hezekiah Joslyn and Helen Leslie, were abolitionists who opened their home in Cicero on the underground railroad. Hezekiah and Helen educated Matilda, encouraging her to ask questions and look for answers. Matilda’s husband, Henry Hill Gage, was born on September 7, 1817 in Cicero, NY. Henry’s family were also abolitionists, who welcomed freedom seekers on the underground railroad into their home.

Matilda married Henry in 1844, and when they eventually moved to Fayetteville in 1854, they opened the house to the underground railroad, as their parents had when they were young. Henry ran a drygoods business down the hill, making good use of the village’s connection to the Erie Canal. They remained active in the abolitionist movement, welcoming other activists into their home.

In 1852, Matilda spoke at the 3rd National Woman’s Rights Convention in Syracuse, NY, immediately becoming a leading figure in the suffrage movement. A skilled philosopher, writer, and organizer, she helped run the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA), sharing leadership positions with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Matilda edited and published the NWSA’s newspaper, the National Citizen and Ballot Box, (1878-1881), and co-authored the first three volumes of the History of Woman’s Suffrage with Stanton and Anthony.

Matilda and Henry had five children, four of whom lived to adulthood. Their youngest daughter, Maud, married L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the front parlor of the home. Matilda’s influence on Frank’s writing was significant, and while Oz is known globally, Matilda herself was written out of history—a term referred to as the Matilda Effect (Rossiter, 1993).

An outspoken critic of the Church’s teachings on the inferiority of women, Matilda was ultimately pushed out of the suffrage movement. In 1890, she formed the Women’s National Liberal Union, which was the first organization in the United States dedicated to the separation of Church and State. In 1893, she published her seminal work Woman, Church and State, in which she exposed the various ways in which the Church perpetuated women’s oppression and envisioned a regenerated world through the sharing and value of women’s knowledge.

Matilda was adopted into the wolf clan of the Mohawk Nation in 1893. She was given the name Karonienhawi, or “She Who Holds The Sky.” This was, in part, to honor her vocal advocacy against the federal government’s treatment of the Haudenosaunee. She described that oldest of democracies in the most respectful of terms: “Never was justice more perfect, never was civilization higher.”

Today, Matilda’s home in Fayetteville, NY serves as the headquarters of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation. The Foundation hosts a Museum, Research Library, Collection, educational programming, and social justice dialogue.