Historian and professor Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner has spent decades researching the Gage family in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Decades earlier, she met and befriended the last living member of the
Fierce and forgotten feminist with ties to Fargo worked beside Susan B. Anthony
Written out of history, Matilda Joslyn Gage was a radical reformer and avid supporter of women s rights.
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Danielle A. Teigen | 12:28 pm, Nov. 3, 2020 ×
Matilda Joslyn Gage was active in the woman suffrage movement for more than 40 years of her life. Photo courtesy of Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
FARGO When you hear the words “women’s suffrage,” you likely think of women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And that’s perfectly normal. Their names are irrevocably tied to the history of a movement that began in 1848 and didn’t culminate until 1920 when white women earned the right to vote (
Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Her story is one of relentless reform fueled by an incredible desire to give women more rights to guide the path of their own lives. Her story began in New York but ended up spanning west to Dakota Territory, thanks to her four children who settled in that wild frontier: three in Aberdeen, S.D., and one near Edgeley, N.D. (Two daughters actually ended up living in Fargo at the end of their lives, according to an April 16, 1915 issue of The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican.)
Here are six of the most interesting facts about a woman who changed the course of history for women in America and was effectively erased from it by the women she spent a lifetime advocating alongside, culled from Angela Carpenter Shirley’s book “