The Suffragist Who Inspired the Powerful Women of Oz

When the Statue of Liberty was unveiled in 1886, Matilda Gage shouted from a megaphone that it was a travesty to portray liberty as a woman when women didn't have the right to vote. Gage was part of the trio who launched the national women's suffrage movement along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, until she parted with them over the alliance with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Gage was opposed to mixing religion with the right to vote. She wrote about the persecution of smart or unruly women as "witches" from a feminist point of view, after critics called her satanic and a heretic. Gage's adventures also crossed paths with the Underground Railroad, Sitting Bull, Anthony Comstock (of the Comstock laws), and the Theosophical Society.

Gage had four children. The youngest was Maud, who dropped out of Cornell to marry her roommate's cousin, an actor and failed chicken farmer named L. Frank Baum. Gage lived with the Baums off and on for the rest of her life, as Baum launched one failed business after another. When Gage also suffered a financial setback, she encouraged both Frank and Maud to write fantasy stories to sell, even providing ideas to work around. Baum found success selling short stories to magazines, and in 1900 published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Read about Matilda Gage's life and her influence on Baum and his writing at Smithsonian.