Matilda Joslyn Gage devoted her life from 1826 to 1898 to extending liberty and equality to women and to those held in slavery. As a child, she saw her parents shelter people fleeing slavery, and after she and her husband Henry moved here in 1854, she made this house a stop on the Underground Railroad. She joined the Underground Railroad network run by the Reverend Jermain W. Loguen and his wife Caroline, the African American conductors of the main station in Syracuse. Gage opposed inequality based on both race and sex. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were frequent visitors, and Gage worked with them to found the National Woman Suffrage Association and published the organization's official newspaper from this house. She also supported the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) struggle to win legal recognition of their treaty rights.