Matilda Joslyn Gage suffragist Cicero, Syracuse

Gage Was a Woman Who Changed History

Matilda Joslyn Gage was born on March 24, 1826, in Cicero, New York. An only child, she was raised in a household dedicated to antislavery. Her father, Dr. Hezekiah Joslyn, was a nationally known abolitionist, and the Joslyn home was a station on the Underground Railway.

In 1845 she married merchant Henry Hill Gage, with whom she would have four children. They eventually settled in Fayetteville, New York, and their home became a station on the Underground Railroad. Although occupied with both family and antislavery activities, Gage was drawn to a new cause: the woman’s suffrage movement. Her life’s work would become the struggle for the complete liberation of women.

Unable to attend the first Woman’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls in 1848, Gage attended and addressed the third national convention in Syracuse in 1852. She became a noted speaker and writer on woman’s suffrage.

During the Civil War, Gage was an enthusiastic organizer of hospital supplies for Union soldiers. In 1862 she predicted the failure of any course of defense and maintenance of the Union that did not emancipate the slaves.

Gage, along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a founding member of the National Woman Suffrage Association and served in various offices of that organization (1869-1889). She helped organize the Virginia and New York state suffrage associations, and was an officer in the New York association for twenty years. From 1878 to 1881 she published the National Citizen and Ballot Box, the official newspaper of the NWSA.

In 1871 Gage was one of the many women nationwide who unsuccessfully tried to test the law by attempting to vote. When Susan B. Anthony successfully voted in the 1872 presidential election and was arrested, Gage came to her aid and supported her during her trial. In 1880 Gage led 102 Fayetteville women to the polls in 1880 when New York State allowed women to vote in school districts where they paid their taxes.

During the 1870s Gage spoke out against the brutal and unfair treatment of Native Americans. She was adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk nation and given the name Ka-ron-ien-ha-wi (Sky Carrier). Inspired by the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy’s form of government, where “the power between the sexes was nearly equal,” this indigenous practice of woman’s rights became her vision.

Gage coedited with Stanton and Anthony the first three volumes of the six-volume The History of Woman Suffrage (1881-1887). She also authored the influential pamphlets Woman as Inventor (1870), Woman’s Rights Catechism (1871), and Who Planned the Tennessee Campaign of 1862? (1880).

Discouraged with the slow pace of suffrage efforts in the 1880s, and alarmed by the conservative religious movement that had as its goal the establishment of a Christian state, Gage formed the Women’s National Liberal Union in 1890, to fight moves to unite church and state. Her book Woman, Church and State (1893) articulates her views.

While Gage remained a supporter of woman’s rights throughout her life, she spent her elder years concentrating on religious issues.

Gage died in Chicago, Illinois, on March 18, 1898. Her lifelong motto appears on her gravestone in Fayetteville: “There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven; that word is Liberty.”

Welcome to the Finger Lakes Cultural and Natural History Museum Project, a proposal to create a new museum that will showcase the 9,000-square-mile Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

Contact:                     John Adamski
Contact Info:             Phone: 585-746-6247
                                  Email: mail@fingerlakesmuseum.org

Exhibits are planned to include Native American culture, early colonization, and the histories of agriculture, viniculture, and commerce. Artifacts will range from antique boats and farm equipment to an immense freshwater aquarium containing the fish species that are native to the Finger Lakes. Outdoor exhibits will feature live specimens of native wildlife in natural settings like beavers, otters and the Seneca White Deer. Special focus will be given to invasive species such as lamprey eels, purple loosestrife and zebra mussels.

Each of the eleven Finger Lakes will be individually featured with geographical, geological, glacial and topographic details that depict the effects of the receding glaciers on the region 12,000 years ago.

Included in the concept is an art and photo gallery, an auditorium, a bookstore and a research library as well as flex-space for any other regional museums and historical societies within the fourteen Finger Lakes counties to present their own exhibits on a rotating basis.

How far along are we and where do we go from here?

Although the project is still in an embryonic stage, it has received the support and endorsements of the Finger Lakes Future Alliance, Finger Lakes Sierra Club, Life in the Finger Lakes magazine, Seneca White Deer, Inc., and The Nature Conservancy. Soon we will be forming an exploratory committee to study feasibility, select a site, prepare a business plan, and search for members of the Board of Trustees. Fundraising will begin as soon as a not-for-profit corporation is formed and the board is seated.

We are planning for a new facility of about 40,000 square-feet, which will feature state-of-the-art interactive indoor and outdoor exhibits.

How can you help?

Soon this website will be equipped to accept membership applications and other offers of support and announce upcoming fundraising events. Please feel free to offer your ideas and suggestions by contacting us. Thank you.

John Adamski, Project Director

Homer New York Center for Arts

If you are visiting our website, it means that some part of the world of the Arts, if not all, is important to you. Whether it is the performances in the Whiting Theater or the exhibits in the Borg-Warner Morse TEC Gallery; possibly it is Cortland City Ballet or Ballroom Dancing with Bess Koval. Maybe it is the art courses or the lectures we hold, all this is under one roof and available to you.

The activities held here at the Center are countless and the possibilities of what is to come are endless, but whatever it is that brought you here says, “You care”. You care about having and keeping the Arts in your life and that, my friend, is important! For without your caring, organizations such as this cannot exist.

So, for whatever activity you choose to attend at the Center, thank you. Thank you from the Board of Directors and thank you from myself!

Oh, and by the way, you can always become a Member. There are several levels to choose from plus they come with perks!

1890 House Museum and Center for Victorian Art

37 Tompkins Street
Cortland NY 13045

(607) 756-7551

For more information: www.1890house.org

Grand limestone mansion was built at the height of the “Gilded Age” by successful wire manufacturer Chester F. Wickwire. The lavish interior of the 30 room mansion features parquet floors, jewel-like stained glass windows, ornate decorative stenciling and oak and cherry woodwork. The massive limestone castle is the highlight of Cortland’s Historic District and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Visit the museum’s 4-room orientation center, then explore the towers and turrets, and nooks and crannies of this captivating structure. The museum grounds also feature landscaped lawns and a stately two story carriage barn.

Daily 1 – 4 p.m., except Mondays and major holidays. Admission charge. Children under 12 and members free. Special group tours are also available.

The Smith Opera House
 82 South Seneca Street, Geneva 14456

 Currently the Smith Opera House Calendar can be found at http://www.thesmith.org/NewFiles/main.html.  The event listings are numberous.

 The Smith Opera House’s impact on our community is immense. It is the center of the region’s cultural life, providing entertainment, education, and the energizing force that pulls us all together in celebration of our proud past and our promising future.