Frances D. Gage

Frances Dana Gage was an influential leader in the abolitionist, temperance and women's rights movements in Ohio in the years before the American Civil War.

France Barker was born in Marietta, Ohio in 1808. Her parents were Elizabeth Dana and Col. Joseph Barker. In 1829, she married James L. Gage, an abolitionist lawyer from McConnelsville, Ohio. Following her marriage, Gage became active in several reform movements including abolitionism, temperance, and women's rights.

Gage assumed a leadership role in the women's rights movement in Ohio, following the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in 1848. She presided over a women's rights conference in McConnelsville  in 1850. At that conference, Gage collected petitions urging an upcoming state constitutional convention to give Ohio women the right to vote. When the Ohio Constitution of 1851 was ratified women's suffrage was not included.

Undaunted, Gage continued her involvement in the women's rights movement. She led another state convention in Akron on May 29, 1851. At this meeting, she and other women speakers were heckled by men, including several ministers, who disapproved of their goals. It was at this conference that Sojourner Truth, a former slave, gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. Gage also served as president of a national conference held in Cleveland in 1853.

In spite of her work, Gage did not see women gain significant ground in the years prior to the Civil War. After the war, when it became evident that women would not gain rights from the Fourteenth Amendment or the Fifteenth Amendment, women began to establish a number of national organizations to seek the right to vote.

Frances Dana Gage continued to be active in many different reform movements even after she was disabled with injuries from a carriage accident in 1867. The mother of eight children who lived to adulthood, Gage was also the author of several books and a large number of articles. She wrote children's stories and verses under the pen name of "Aunt Fanny. Frances Dana Gage died in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1884.