GAGE, MATILDA JOSLYN. Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898), suffragist, abolitionist, and religious radical, was born March 24, 1826, in Cicero, New York, and spent her entire life within a thirty-mile radius of nearby Syracuse, raising her family of four with her husband, the merchant Henry H. Gage. Gage was the youngest member of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) leadership triumvirate (with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony), presiding over the Executive Committee of the NWSA for most of the 1870s and 1880s while heading the New York State Suffrage Association. The three women, editors of the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage (1881–1887), "will ever hold a grateful place in the hearts of posterity," predicted the Woman's Tribune in 1888.

A prolific writer and thorough researcher, Gage edited a suffrage newspaper for four years (The National Citizen and Ballot Box, 1878–1881) and contributed as correspondent to...