My Great Great-Grandmother, Matilda Joslyn Gage, was an American writer and activist. She worked for women’s rights, was an abolitionist, and fought for Native American rights. Many don’t know that she ran an “underground railroad” during and after the Civil War.

She was born March 24, 1826, and died March 18, 1898, at the age of 71. She is honored by being in the Smithsonian. She worked with other activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Her daughter, Maud Gage, married L. Frank Baum, in 1882. They were my great-grandparents.  One of their sons, Frank Joslyn Baum, my grandfather, served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines. He died in 1958, at the age of 74. He wrote To Please a Child and The Laughing Dragon of Oz.