Gender History

NY Journalism of Djuna Barnes Exhibit Scheduled

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&#8220Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913-1919,&#8221 an exhibition of 45 objects including drawings, works on paper, documentary photographs, and stories in newsprint by the celebrated writer and early twentieth-century advocate for women’s rights Djuna Barnes (American, 1892-1982), will be presented in the Herstory Gallery of the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art from January 20 through October 28, 2012. Among the works on view will be eight illustrations Barnes composed to accompany her newspaper columns.

The Herstory Gallery is devoted to the remarkable contributions of the women represented in The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, on permanent view in the adjacent gallery. Barnes is one of 1,038 women honored in Chicago’s iconic feminist work.

Prior to publishing the modernist novels and plays for which she is now remembered, such as Ryder (1928), Nightwood (1936), and The Antiphon (1958), which present complex portrayals of lesbian life and familial dysfunction, Barnes supported herself as a journalist and illustrator for a variety of daily newspapers and monthly magazines, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, McCall’s, Vanity Fair, Charm, and the New Yorker.

Brought up in an unconventional household, Barnes developed an outsider’s perspective on &#8220normal&#8221 life that served her well as a writer. Her liberal sexuality fit in perfectly with the bohemian lifestyle of Greenwich Village and, later, the lesbian expatriate community in Paris. From her first articles in 1913 until her departure for Europe in 1921, Barnes specialized in a type of journalism that was less about current events and more about her observations of the diverse personalities and happenings that gave readers an intimate portrait of her favorite character-New York City. Attempting to capture its transition from turn of the century city to modern metropolis, Barnes developed her unique style of &#8220newspaper fictions,&#8221 offering impressionistic observations and dramatizing whatever she felt to be the true significance or subtexts of a story.

Image: Djuna Barnes, Sketch of a woman with hat, looking right, for &#8220The Terrorists,&#8221 New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, September 30, 1917. Ink on paper. Djuna Barnes Papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries

Woman of History Award Nominations Sought

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Each year, to honor Martha Washington herself, Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site presents the “Martha Washington Woman Of History Award.” The recipient of the award must be a woman who has demonstrated similar characteristics while contributing towards the education and preservation of history in the Hudson Valley. The recipient will receive a place of honor on the plaque showing past recipients of this award, and an invitation to be part of the selection committee for future awardees. Along with this, she will be expected to attend “The General’s Lady,” a Woman’s History Month program, held each year in March, during which she will be acknowledged.

Any woman who has made a contribution to the history of the Hudson Valley through education, promotion, or preservation is eligible to be nominated for this award. The nominee’s service to the historic community shall be taken into consideration. The nominee can be someone who was involved in a project dealing with history and/or historic preservation. This individual must have been influential in some way, encouraging interest, enthusiasm and awareness of Hudson River Valley history even at its most basic, or grassroots level.

Nomination forms are available online. Completed forms will be reviewed by a selection committee including Washington’s Headquarters Staff, volunteers, and previous Woman of History Award recipients. Nominees will be notified within one month after the submission deadline.

The 2012 award will be presented at “The General’s Lady” on Saturday, March 31, 2012. Deadline for receipt of applications is January 6, 2012.

Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site, opened in 1850, is the first publicly owned historic site in the nation. The Commander-in-Chief, General George Washington, established Headquarters at Jonathan and Tryntje Hasbrouck’s fieldstone farmhouse from April 1, 1782 until August 19, 1783. This became the longest stay at any of his over 165 Headquarters during the 8? years of the Revolution.

While here, the General, his wife, officers, and his house servants lived and worked in close quarters, as a steady stream of guests came to meet with the Washingtons. During the critical months spent in Newburgh, Washington maintained a strong Army with eventual plans to disband it. He negotiated with contentious individuals in the Congress. Elsewhere, he dealt with problems of supply, training, pay and morale – all the things that affected his troops. He rejected a suggestion of an American monarchy, defused a potential mutiny among his officers, and proffered advice on the future of the new republic. In order to recognize the heroism of enlisted men, the Commander-in-Chief, at his Newburgh headquarters, created and awarded the Badge of Military Merit, the forerunner of the Purple Heart medal. On April 19, 1783, General Washington’s order for a “cessation of hostilities” was announced and he then dealt with the problems attendant to disbandment of the Army.

Martha Washington’s myriad traits, from big sister to business woman, were necessary attributes during her tenure at Headquarters Newburgh. For example, she travelled long distances every winter of the War to be with her husband and kept up communications with Mt. Vernon while supervising their immediate wartime household. Martha helped the Aides-de-camp with office work by copying letters and expense accounts. She was renowned for her pleasant demeanor even under the pressures of war and the need to hostess a constant crush of military and civilian personnel.

Photo: Washington’s Headquarters circa 1852. Courtesy of Palisades Interstate Park Commission Archives.

New Plaque Honors Edith Wharton

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New York City’s Historic Districts Council and the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center have commemorated the life and work of Edith Wharton, author of “The House of Mirth” and “The Age of Innocence” with a historic plaque. Born in 1862 at 14 West 23rd Street in the Ladies’ Mile Historic District, Wharton was a chronicler of New York City’s Gilded Age and trendsetter for her generation.

The plaque is part of the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center’s Cultural Medallion program. The Center, chaired by Dr. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel (HDC’s 2011 Landmarks Lion), has installed almost 100 medallions around New York City to heighten public awareness of New York’s cultural and social history.

Distinguished Edith Wharton scholars, including Susan Whissler, executive director of The Mount, participated in the plaque unveiling.

Photo: Photograph taken in Newport, Rhode Island, of author Edith Wharton, wearing hat with a feather, coat with fur trim, and a fur muff. Image courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Carol Kammen: Upstate Women in the Civil War

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Though war was &#8220no place for a woman,&#8221 many New York state women during the Civil War set off from their homes to nurse the sick and wounded. One of the projects sponsored by the Tompkins County Civil War Commission is to honor women from the county who went to war.

The Army set regulations for nurses. They were to be women between the ages of 35 and 50- they needed to be persons of experience, good conduct, superior education, serious disposition and good health. They were to be neat, orderly, sober, industrious and be willing to travel with a small amount of luggage. Their dress was to be plain, brown, gray or black, with no ornaments. They would be paid 40 cents a day or $12 a month in addition to food, housing, and transportation.

Not all women who nursed met these standards and most encountered mistrust from a number of quarters, including doctors and quartermasters and by the public who feared they might be more &#8220temptress than nurse.&#8221 The sick and wounded, however, appreciated their presence and one reportedly said to a nurse, You are the &#8220God-Blessedist Woman I ever saw.&#8221

Among the first to go to war was Susan Emily Hall who enlisted as a nurse in April 1861. Hall, born in 1826, moved with her family to a farm in the Town of Ulysses where she grew up, one of a number of children. She stayed at home and cared for her parents in their old age but when both had died, she set off to New York City to study medicine with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. After the firing on Fort Sumter, Blackwell called for nurses and urged her students to enlist. Georgeanna Woolsey reported that two groups attended classes at New York Hospital where they learned &#8220how to make beds for the wounded, cook food properly for the sick, wash and dress wounds, and others things as they come along.&#8221

In July, Dorothea Dix called Hall and Dada, who came from Syracuse, to Washington. Dada has left a diary account of their experiences- both women served to the end of the conflict. Hall returned to New York state in the spring, her health strained- Dada remained in service until the fall of 1865.

Sarah Graham Palmer, a widow of 30 with two children, left in 1862 following the great enlistment of that summer to accompany her brothers who had enlisted in the NY 109th Volunteers. She commented that it was &#8220something to brave popular opinion, something to bear the sneers of those who loved their ease better than their country’s heroes, and who could sit down in peace and comfort at home, while a soldier’s rations, and a soldier’s ten for months and years made up the sum of our luxurious life.&#8221 [Aunt Becky’s Army Life (1867), page 2.] Palmer, who became known as &#8220Aunt Becky&#8221 by the troops, returned to Ithaca in 1865 where she married and emigrated to Iowa.

Sophronia Bucklin of Cayuga County also went to war in 1862 and served under the direction of Dix, working at a variety of military hospitals. She lived out the rest of her days in Ithaca. She too left a memoir of her experiences titled In Hospital and Camp: A Woman’s Record of Thrilling Incidents Among the Wounded in the Late War (1869).

Julia Cook heard of the need for nurses in the spring of 1864. Her husband had died in the war and her son had been wounded in battle but continued with his regiment. Cook went to Washington and began nursing but she soon fell ill and was sent home to Dryden.

Cook and Bucklin are buried in Tompkins County- Hall in California, Palmer in Iowa. These women were little honored in their lifetime- a flag pole was erected over Aunt Becky’s grave in DeMoines in 2009. It seems fitting that we remember them today as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

By action of the Tompkins County Civil War Commission and the TC3 Foundation a fund was created to honor these women and provide aid to nursing students at Tompkins Cortland Community College in Dryden, New York. These will be named for Susan Emily Hall, Julia Cook, and Sarah Graham Palmer. A faculty enrichment grant will be named for Sophronia Bucklin. Donations to the Civil War Nurses Fund have come from all around the country.

Nurses came from all over the state. I have been collecting the names of women from New York who served and would be glad to post that list and add names of others to it.

Illustration: &#8220The Dying Soldier &#8211 The Last Letter From Home&#8221 by F. O. C. Darley, as it appeared in Mary A. Livermore’s My Story of the War (1888).

Carol Kammen is Tompkins County Historian, a Senior Lecturer at Cornell University, and the author of several books, including On Doing Local History: Reflections on What Local Historians Do, Why, and What It Means and The Peopling of Tompkins County: A Social History.

Abby Kelley Foster Inducted into Halls of Fame

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Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Abby Kelley Foster will be inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame on October 1st in Seneca Falls and into the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) on Saturday, October 22 at ceremonies to be held at Colgate University.

Born in Pelham, MA January 15, 1811 Kelley was raised a Quaker and became a teacher at the Friends School in Lynn MA in 1829. In 1832, when she lived in Worcester, she was influenced by a speech from radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. She joined the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1837, she, and others, gathered over six thousand signatures on anti-slavery petitions.

The Lynn Female Society named her a delegate to the first national Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in New York City. The following year, at the second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, Abby Kelley gave her first speech against slavery with a mob threatening to burn down Pennsylvania Hall.

Abby and fellow radical abolitionist Stephen Foster married in 1845 and bought a farm in Worcester MA. Abby gave birth to their daughter, Alla, in 1847. Kelley faced hostile audiences from within and from outside the abolition movement in her five decades of advocating for immediate abolition of slavery and for advocating leaving churches that did not condemn slavery.

At 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 22, Stacey Robertson PhD. will present Abby Kelley Foster: A Radical Voice in the West, the first program in the annual afternoon Upstate Institute Inductee Symposia. Robertson states, “Abby Kelley Foster single handedly transformed the nature of the western antislavery movement in the 1840s. From her first visit in the summer of 1845 she inspired hundreds of abolitionists to reconsider their approach to the movement and embrace a more uncompromising position. Women found her irresistible and she helped to organize dozens of female anti-slavery societies in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. She also convinced several women to join her in the lecturing field, devoting themselves full-time to the movement. No other person impacted western antislavery more than Abby Kelley Foster.”

Dr. Robertson is the Oglesby Professor of American Heritage and the Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Bradley University (Peoria IL) where she has taught since 1994. She is the author of three books: Parker Pillsbury: Radical Abolitionist, Male Feminist (2000), Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest (2010), and Antebellum Women: Private, Public, Partisan (American Controversies), co-authored with Carol Lasser (2010). She is the recipient of many teaching awards and research fellowships and has lectured at more than one hundred different venues nationally and internationally.

The Worcester Women’s History Project (WWHP) in Worcester MA will partner with NAHOF for the evening induction ceremonies at 7 p.m. in Golden Auditorium at Colgate. Lynne McKenney Lydick will present a one woman play Yours for Humanity —Abby which the WWHP. Members of the WWHP will also participate in the induction ceremony for Foster in the evening.

The public is encouraged to attend the Foster sessions. Admission at the door for each of the lectures and the induction ceremony is five dollars. (Admission for all four symposia programs is eight dollars.) Information and registration forms for the day-long induction event are available at www.AbolitionHoF.org or at 315-366-8101.

Photo: Abby Kelley Foster portrait created by artist Joseph Flores of Rochester NY for the abolitionist’s induction into the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum at ceremonies on Saturday, October 22 at Colgate University, Hamilton NY.

Judith Wellman Keynotes Annual Peterboro Tea

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Dr. Judith Wellman, well known scholar and author on the history of women’s rights and the Underground Railroad, will be the keynote speaker on Sunday, September 25 at 12:30 p.m. at the Annual In the Kitchen Bloomer Tea held at the Smithfield Community Center in Peterboro to celebrate Elizabeth Smith Miller’s birthday and women’s rights heritage. Miller, daughter of Ann and Gerrit Smith, is credited with creating a trouser costume in the mid 1800s that became a symbol of the women’s movement.

Dr. Wellman, author of The Road to Seneca Falls, will describe Peterboro’s role in the women’s movement, including the influence of Gerrit and Ann Smith during the summers that Elizabeth Cady Stanton spent in Peterboro, the debates over dress reform, and the inclusion of women in the Liberty League convention. Wellman states, “Everybody knows about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her work for women’s rights. But few people understand how important her cousins, Gerrit and Ann Smith and their daughter Elizabeth Smith Miller, were in shaping her reform agenda. Stanton and Elizabeth Smith Miller had a lifelong friendship, based on their shared sense of humor and their commitment to women’s rights (including dress reform). From Gerrit Smith, Stanton gained access to ideas and people at the highest levels of antislavery organization. (If you) want to hear the backstory of the Seneca Falls convention, come to this talk!”

Judith Wellman, Ph.D., is Historian and Principal Investigator, Historical New York Research Associates, and professor emerita, State University of New York at Oswego. Wellman has more than 30 years of award-winning experience in research, teaching, cultural resource surveys, and grants administration in U.S. history, women’s history, local history, Underground Railroad history, and historic preservation.

After earning her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in 1974, Judith Wellman taught history at the State University of New York at Oswego. She teaches two online courses through the SUNY Learning Network and the State University of New York at Oswego: &#8220Doing History Locally&#8221 and “Historic Preservation and Heritage Tourism.”

Judith Wellman has worked as a consultant and principal investigator on award-winning projects with the National Park Service, the Mary Baker Eddy Library, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the U. S. Department of Education, the Preservation League of New York State, the New York State Office of Historic Preservation, the New York Council for the Humanities, the Documentary Heritage Program of the New York State Archives, National Public Radio, the U.S. Department of Education, the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History, and a wide variety of local historical, genealogical, teachers, women’s, and preservation groups. She also regularly gives papers at major scholarly conventions, including the Organization of American Historians, Association for the Study of African American Life, and the National Council on Public History.

Judith Wellman is a member of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, the American Association for State and Local History, the Association for the Study of African American Life, and the National Council for Public History. She is a member of the Preservation League of New York State and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She is listed as a researcher for cultural resource surveys with the Preservation League of New York State and with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. She has served on the boards of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, the Women’s Museum and Leadership Center, the Heritage Foundation of Oswego, and the New York State History Advisory Board of the New York State Education Department. She is currently Coordinator of the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Museum.

Wellman’s keynote Peterboro on the Road to Seneca Falls follows a tea catered by The Copper Turret of Morrisville NY and served by ladies attired in the Bloomer costume of Peterboro. Debra Kolsrud will describe ongoing history activities in Stanton’s hometown of Johnstown NY. Maxine Getty and Jody Luce will read Miller and Stanton letters. There will also be basket raffles and door prizes.

The tea is a presentation in a series of programs offered by the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark in Peterboro made possible, in part, by a PACE grant from the Central New York Community Foundation. $35 reservations required by August 27. $40 reservations by September 17. Seating is limited. Send check to Smithfield Community Association (501c3) PO Box 42, Peterboro NY 13134 or visit www.inthekitchentea.com

Stanton and Anthony: A World Changing Friendship

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In the spring of 1851 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were introduced to each other on a street corner in Seneca Falls NY. Immediately drawn to each other, they formed an everlasting and legendary friendship. Together, they challenged entrenched beliefs, customs, and laws that oppressed women and spearheaded the fight to gain legal rights, including the right to vote, despite fierce opposition, daunting conditions, scandalous entanglements, and betrayal by their friends and allies. Penny Colman weaves commentary, events, quotations, and personalities into her new book Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship That Changed the World and into her program on the two famous women’s rights activists.

At 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 27 Colman will be discussing and signing her new work at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, 4543 Peterboro Road, Peterboro NY. Colman will highlight the friend ship between Stanton and her cousin Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, whom she once called “the sage of Peterboro.” Stanton spent summers in Peterboro in the 1830s and it was during these visits that she met Henry Brewster Stanton and he proposed marriage to her. Smith’s daughter Elizabeth and Stanton were close friends with each other and with Anthony.

Author Penny Colman writes about illustrious, but not typically well-known, women and a wide range of significant and intriguing topics in her books for all ages: Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II, Corpses, and Thanksgiving: The True Story. She has taught nonfiction literature and creative writing at colleges and universities, including Ohio State University, Queens College, the City University of New York and Teachers College, Columbia University. She lives in Englewood, New Jersey

The Colman program is the one of two Peterboro programs observing Women’s Equality Day on August 26. At 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 28 at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Carol Faulkner Ph.D. will discuss her new book Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America.

Admission to both programs is two dollars. Stewards and students are free. The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum are open from 1 – 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays from May 14 to October 23 in 2011.

Photo: Elizabeth Smith Miller (L) talks with her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and friend Susan B. Anthony (R). Photo Courtesy of Coline Jenkins, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust.

Peterboro Programs to Observe Women’s Rights

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Equality Day has been observed on August 26 since 1971 when the efforts of Congresswoman Bella Abzug succeeded in commemorating the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – the Woman Suffrage Amendment. The final programs of the 2011 Peterboro Heritage season recognize women of the 19th Century who laid the ground work for extending suffrage to disenfranchised groups.

Equality Day Weekend will be observed in Peterboro by two presentations on three women who led the women’s rights movement. On Saturday, August 27 at 2 p.m. author Penny Colman presents Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship that Changed the World, and signs her new book by the same name at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, 4543 Peterboro Road, Peterboro. The next day Dr. Carol Faulkner presents her new biography Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s History in 19th Century America at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro.

The Fourth Annual Elizabeth Smith Miller In the Kitchen Bloomer Tea will be held on Sunday, September 25 at 12:30 at the Smithfield Community Center with Dr. Judith Wellman speaking on Peterboro and the Road to Seneca Falls. Debra Kolstrud, the owner of the historical home at 9 S. William Street in Johnstown NY where Susan B. Anthony boarded in 1884 when she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the third volume of their History of Woman Suffrage, will update on activities in Johnstown, Stanton’s hometown. Selected letters between cousins Elizabeth Smith Miller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton will be read. (Reservations are required.: $35 by August 27. $40 by September 17.) Seating is limited. For more information and online reservations visit www.inthekitchentea.com.

On Saturday, October 22 the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will induct Abby Kelley Foster, the 19th Century Worcester abolitionist and women’s rights activist, into the Hall of Fame at ceremonies held at Colgate University. Stacey Robertson, Director of Women’s Studies program at Bradley University in Peoria IL, presents Abby Kelley Foster: A Radical Voice to the West at 12:30 pm in Golden Auditorium. That evening Lynne McKenney Lydick, Worcester Women’s History Project, will perform Yours for Humanity, a one woman play about Foster.

The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum are open from 1 – 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays from May 14 to October 23 in 2011. Admission to each site is two dollars. Stewards and students are free. For more information: Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, 4543 Peterboro Road, Peterboro NY 13134-0006. Call 315-684-3262 or visit online.

National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY 13134-0055. Call 315-684-3262 or visit online.

For more information and updates, follow www.sca-peterboro.org and www.AbolitionHoF.org

Event highlights Lucretia Mott, 19th Century Activist

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Lucretia Coffin Mott was one of the most famous and controversial women in nineteenth-century America. Mott was viewed in her time as a dominant figure in the dual struggles for racial and sexual equality. In the first biography of Mott in thirty years, historian Carol Faulkner reveals the motivations of Mott’s activism and interest in peace, temperance, prison reform, religious freedom, and Native American rights. Mott was among the first white Americans to call for an immediate end to slavery. Her long-term collaboration with white and black women in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society was remarkable. Mott was known as the &#8220moving spirit&#8221 of the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. She envisioned women’s rights not as a new and separate movement, but rather as an extension of the universal principles of liberty and equality.

At 2 p.m. Sunday, August 28, Carol Faulkner Ph.D. will discuss her new biography Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America and sign books at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY. Mott was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005 in the first group to be honored.

Dr. Faulkner is Associate Professor of History at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, and author of Women’s Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Aid Movement. Attention to Mott grew out of Faulkner’s interest in the anti-slavery and women’s rights movements and she became even more interested in Mott when she won a National Historical Publications and Records Commission fellowship to work on Mott’s letters. Faulkner is also a member of the Cabinet of Freedom for the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum.

The Mott program is the second of two Peterboro programs observing Equality Day. At 2 p.m. on Saturday, August 27 Penny Colman will discuss her new book Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship that Changed the World at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, 4543 Peterboro Road, Peterboro.

Admission to both programs is two dollars. Stewards and students are free. The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum are open from 1 – 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays from May 14 to October 23 in 2011.

A Teacher Open House at the Gage Center

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The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, NY would like to share with teachers the opportunity to learn more about Matilda Joslyn Gage, an important local historical figure on Thursday, September 22, 3:30-5:30 pm?.

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1824-1898) was involved in the Abolitionist Movement and the Underground Railroad. Along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gage was a major figure in the Women’s Rights Movement. With them, she co-authored The History of Woman Suffrage.

She was a supporter of Native American sovereignty and a proponent of the total separation of Church and State, she was the author of Woman, Church and State.

Because of her strong, liberal position on religious freedom, she was written out of history books until recently.

Gage’s ideas are as relevant today as they were in the 19th century and this is a great way to bring Central New York history into your classroom and promote discussion of the past and contemporary issues.

Materials for lessons, activities, and curriculum packets available.

For more information, call 637-9511.