Matilda Joslyn Gage by Nancy J. Farrier

 

Matilda Joslyn Gage
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Matilda Joslyn, born in 1826 in Cicero, New York, learned to care for others from an early age. Her father, a doctor, was a liberal thinker, and an abolitionist. He made their home into an underground railroad station, and Matilda was involved from an early age in helping escaped slaves get to safety.

 

Matilda received her early education at home from her parents. Her father encouraged her to study medicine and taught her what he could. Matilda loved education and went to Clinton Liberal Institute but was refused admission to study as a doctor because she was a woman.

 

Engraving of 
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Wikimedia Commons

In 1845, Matilda married Henry H. Gage, a merchant. They moved to Fayetteville,New York. After the Fugitive Slave Law passed in 1850, Matilda was threatened with prison for helping escaped slaves, something the new law stated was a criminal act.

 

Matilda turned her focus to the women’s rights movement, and spoke at the National women’s Rights Convention in Syracuse in 1852. She was well-educated and a gifted writer, often sending articles to newspapers and getting them printed. She was able to put into words the frustrations of women and her writing appealed to many.

 

Susan B. Anthony
By artist J. E. Baker
Wikimedia Commons

By 1870, Matilda had moved to the forefront of the women’s movement, fighting for the right of women to vote. She worked closely with activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She supported Anthony, who had been put on trial for voting in the 1872 presidential election. The three women worked together to compile three volumes of what would become the six-volume set, History of Woman Suffrage. By this time, Matilda had her own newspaper, besides writing for several other periodicals.

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
By Henry Bryan Hall, Jr.
Wikimedia Commons

Matilda was known for her support of female inventors. She wrote a pamphlet, Woman as an Inventor. She brought to light many women whose inventions were stolen by or credited to men. One of those was Catherine Greene. Matilda insisted Greene invented the cotton gin, while Eli Whitney got the credit.

 

Most people believed that women possessed “no inventive or mechanical genius,” but Matilda answered that in 1883 with these words, which were lauded by the New York Times: “In not a single State of the Union is a married woman held to possess a right to her earnings within the family; and in not one-half of them has she a right to their control in business entered upon outside of the household. Should such a woman be successful in obtaining a patent, what then! Would she be free to do as she pleased with it? Not at all. She would hold no right, title, or power over this work of her own brain.” (Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1883)

 

 

She was also an advocate in many other areas, such as Native American rights. She spoke out about the brutal treatment of many Native Americans. She was fascinated with the Iroquois matriarchal society. She spent a lot of time learning from them and being among the tribes. They name her Karonienhawi (she who holds the sky) and initiated her into the Wolf Clan, admitting her to the Iroquois Council of Matrons. 

Matilda's signature
Example of her excellent handwriting

 

Matilda Gage was a hard worker and fought all her life for what she believed and to help those less fortunate. She did her best to pass that on to her children, but her youngest daughter, Maud, was the one who followed in her footsteps the most. (We’ll take a look at Maud and her husband next month.) 

 

In 1898, Matilda died of a stroke at her home. In 1993, Margaret Rossiter, a scientific historian, adopted the phrase Matilda Effect, a reference to Matilda Joslyn Gage. The Matilda Effect applies to women scientists who receive little to no credit for their work. Upon close examination, theses female scientists contributions were much greater than originally thought. 

Plaque outside Fayetteville home
By Dirtdiver, Wikimedia Commons

Matilda left a legacy, including being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of fame in 1995. There is also a plaque outside her home in Fayetteville, New York. Her former home also houses the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and is a museum, open to the public.

 

Have you ever heard of Matilda Joslyn Gage? Do you know who her famous son-in-law is? If not, stay tuned for next month when I’ll take an in-depth look at that part of her family. Remember, I love to hear from you. It’s always fun to share bits of history with you.

Nancy J Farrier is an award-winning, best-selling author who lives in Southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert. She loves the Southwest with its interesting historical past. When Nancy isn’t writing, she loves to read, do needlecraft, play with her cats and dog, and spend time with her family. You can read more about Nancy and her books on her website: nancyjfarrier.com.

Pro-life and Pro-Woman--the Early Feminists

by Kathleen L. Maher

March is Women's History Month, and Heroes, Heroines and History honors the pioneers of Women's Rights. 

https://goo.gl/images/w7XJfS

In a previous post I wrote about Rachel Gleason, a pioneering female doctor who championed women's health. (see post here) Dr. Gleason was only the fourth woman in the US to earn her MD, and she was arguably the very first to devote her practice to women's unique health issues. Her contemporaries, many of them personal friends and acquaintances, were suffragettes, some who stayed at her health resort and were active in New York State for women's causes. They all shared a common view of an issue that has been gaining headlines regarding women's health, a view that has been lost or forgotten over the generations as fundamental to women's rights. They all felt a moral reprehension toward abortion.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton began activism as an abolitionist, married to an abolitionist. But women had a limited voice to champion this worthy cause in her day, which frustrated her enough to begin what would become the birth of the women's movement in Seneca Falls. Stanton was steadfastly against abortion. "Let woman assert herself in all her native purity, dignity, and strength and end this wholesale suffering and murder of helpless children. With centuries of degradation, we have so little of true womanhood, that the world has but the faintest glimmering of what a woman is or should be.” In another instance, she wrote, "The social system is too corrupt, it would certainly seem, long to survive. Infanticide is on the increase to an extent inconceivable. "

Stanton and Anthony

Stanton, along with Susan B. Anthony, published a magazine called The Revolution, the official voice of National Women Suffrage Association whose motto read: “The True Republic–Men, their rights and nothing more; Women, their rights and nothing less.” In more than one instance, The Revolution stated Stanton and Anthony's stance on abortion. This passage from The Revolution indicates not just another early female doctor's disdain for the practice, but the editor's views on it as well.

Dr. Charlotte Lozier of 323 W. 34th St., of this city [New York], was applied to last week by man pretending to be from South Carolina, by the name, Moran, as he also pretended, to procure an abortion on a very pretty young girl apparently about 18 years old. The doctor assured him that he’d come to the wrong place for any such a shameful, revolting, unnatural and unlawful purpose. She proffered to the young woman any assistance in her power to render, at the proper time, and cautioned and counseled her against the fearful act which she and her attendant (whom she called her cousin) proposed.

Another article in The Revolution entitled “Child Murder” has been attributed by some scholars to Susan B. Anthony. It reads:

Guilty? Yes no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician, held a deep respect for life in the womb, of which she said "we can only regard with reverent admiration."  She also held repulsion for the abortionist's trade, and renounced a woman named Madame Restell performing illegal abortions in New York.

"The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term ‘female physician’ should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women."

These are but a few direct quotes spoken or written by the heroines and champions of suffrage and women's rights. Other indications of their stance against abortion can be felt through their refusal to accept revenue through abortifacient/pessary advertisement dollars, and their definition of "voluntary motherhood" to mean a married woman's right to abstinence rather than termination of a pregnancy. These women understood that motherhood was a beautiful and honorable role, to be cherished and protected rather than regarded as an inconvenience or grudging obligation. In fact, to these early activists, to sacrifice the sacredness of the maternal role for career and ambition was to lose the identity of femininity itself. 

Louisa May Alcott, famous for her Civil War era novel Little Women, wrote the following to the editor of The Boston Daily Journal: 

The assertion that suffragists do not care for children and prefer notoriety to the joys of maternity is so fully contradicted by the lives of the women who are trying to make the world a safer place for both sons and daughters, that no defense is needed. Having spent my own life from fifteen to fifty, loving and laboring for children, as teacher, nurse, storyteller and guardian, I know whereof I speak.

These historic voices continue in the true cause of women's freedoms over 100 years later, and the diligent scholar will take in the full counsel of their wisdom. No freedom is won at the sacrifice of another, even the dependent child of one's womb. As we celebrate Women's History Month, let us embrace their message of equal rights for every woman, born and unborn.

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Kathleen L. Maher has had an infatuation with books and fictional heroes ever since her preschool crush, Peter Rabbit. Barbour’s best-selling 2018 Victorian Christmas Brides collection includes her novella “Love Brick by Brick”, featuring her hometown of Elmira, New York. Her debut historical, Bachelor Buttons 2013 blends her Irish heritage and love of the American Civil War. She won the 2012 ACFW Genesis contest for her Civil War story, The Abolitionist’s Daughter: Book 1 in Sons of the Shenandoah Series released summer 2018. Book 2 The Chaplain’s Daughter will be available spring 2019. Her novella “Something Old, Something New” releases Oct 2019 with Barbour’s school teacher romance collection Lessons on Love. Kathleen shares an old farmhouse in upstate New York with her husband, children, and a small zoo of beloved pets.

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