Matilda Joslyn Gage Grave

In a Fayetteville, New York, cemetery is the gravestone of a largely forgotten suffragist leader, which makes a powerful, uncompromising statement.

In the quiet Fayetteville Cemetery, amid rows of conventional memorials, stands a monument that speaks with a voice of radical conviction. It marks the final resting place of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a pioneering suffragist, abolitionist, and freethinker whose contributions to American history were for a time nearly erased. The rough-hewn stone is etched with a sentiment as bold today as it was at the time of her death in 1898: “There is a word sweeter than mother, home, or heaven — that word is liberty.”

This striking epitaph was Gage’s lifelong motto, a distillation of her unwavering dedication to the complete liberation of all people. Alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gage was a foundational figure in the women’s suffrage movement. Yet, her views were often more radical than her contemporaries. She fought not just for the vote, but for women’s reproductive autonomy, critiqued the patriarchal structures of the church, and advocated for the rights of Native Americans, which led to her honorary adoption into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation. Her childhood home in Cicero, New York, was a station on the Underground Railroad, a testament to her early and active role in the abolitionist movement.

Gage’s influence extended into the realm of fantasy through her son-in-law, L. Frank Baum. The author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was profoundly shaped by Gage's feminist and progressive ideals, with many scholars seeing the strong, independent female characters in the Land of Oz as a direct reflection of her powerful mother-in-law.

After her death, Gage’s more radical ideas led to her being largely written out of the history of the suffrage movement she helped build. Her gravestone, however, remains an unyielding testament to her core belief. It is a stark, powerful, and thought-provoking declaration from a woman who valued freedom above all else, a hidden monument to a true American radical.