Read Part One HERE
In this post I will focus on a woman named Frances Dana Barker Gage. She lived from 1798 - 1884.
Frances was born in Union, Ohio, USA. Her parents were among the first settlers in the United States Norrthwest Territory. A farmer's daughter, Frances as educated at a log cabin in the woods, spun the graments she wore, made cheese and butter, and did outdoors chores.
Ftances made frequent visits to her grandmother, May Bancroft Dana. Mary Dana was a radical on the subject of slavery, and Frances learned from her to hate the word, and all it represented. Frances was frequently laughed at in childhood because she sympathised with the poor fugitives from slavery, who often found their way to the neighbourhood in which she lived, seeking the kindness and charity of people.
It had not yet become a crime to help a slave, and Frances' mother often sent her daughter on errands of mercy to the nearby cabins where fugitive slaves sought shelter, often to be caught and sent back to their masters. Frances early became familiar with their suffering and their needs.
At the age of twenty, Frances Dana Barker married James L. Gage, an abolitionist lawyer from McConnellsville, Ohio, who also hated the system of slavery in the South.
Frances Gage was a dedicated advocate of social reform movements that were organised during the decades before the Civil War and she always found herself in a minority through all the struggling years between 1832 and 1865.
The editor of the State Journal invited her to write weekly for his columns for a year. This, at the time, seemed to her a great achievement. But when she wrote about her opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law, the editor sent a note saying her services were not longer wanted.
Frances' professional writing career brought her regional fame. Writing in regional journals as Aunt Fanny, she offered a warm domestic persona who offered advice and support to isolated housewives in Ohio. She wrote letters, essays, poetry, children's stories and novels.
Frances extended her circle of acquaintances beyond Ohio by wrting letters to women she admired. Amelia Bloomer, engaged her to write for the New York State temperance paper, the Lilly. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose 1848 Seneca Falls Convention launched the women's rights movement in America, was also on staff.
P.S. I will continue to share the story of Frances Gage in my next post.
Read Part Twelve HERE
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