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Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America
This is the biography of a ruling-class woman who became a major American philanthropist. The wife of robber-baron Russell Sage (partner of Jay Gould) and in her husband's shadow for 37 years, Olivia Sage took on the mantle of active, reforming womanhood in New York voluntary associations. When Russell Sage died in 1906, he left her a vast fortune. Already in her 70s, she took the money and put it to her own uses. An advocate for the rights of women and the responsibilities of wealth, for moral reform and material benefit, Sage used the money to fund a wide spectrum of progressive reforms that had a lasting impact on American life, including her most significant philanthropy, the Russell Sage Foundation.

1110992695
Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America
This is the biography of a ruling-class woman who became a major American philanthropist. The wife of robber-baron Russell Sage (partner of Jay Gould) and in her husband's shadow for 37 years, Olivia Sage took on the mantle of active, reforming womanhood in New York voluntary associations. When Russell Sage died in 1906, he left her a vast fortune. Already in her 70s, she took the money and put it to her own uses. An advocate for the rights of women and the responsibilities of wealth, for moral reform and material benefit, Sage used the money to fund a wide spectrum of progressive reforms that had a lasting impact on American life, including her most significant philanthropy, the Russell Sage Foundation.

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Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America

Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America

by Ruth Crocker
Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America

Mrs. Russell Sage: Women's Activism and Philanthropy in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America

by Ruth Crocker

Overview

This is the biography of a ruling-class woman who became a major American philanthropist. The wife of robber-baron Russell Sage (partner of Jay Gould) and in her husband's shadow for 37 years, Olivia Sage took on the mantle of active, reforming womanhood in New York voluntary associations. When Russell Sage died in 1906, he left her a vast fortune. Already in her 70s, she took the money and put it to her own uses. An advocate for the rights of women and the responsibilities of wealth, for moral reform and material benefit, Sage used the money to fund a wide spectrum of progressive reforms that had a lasting impact on American life, including her most significant philanthropy, the Russell Sage Foundation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780253220455
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Publication date: 07/30/2008
Series: Philanthropic and Nonprofit Studies
Pages: 525
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range: 216 - 3 Months

About the Author

Ruth Crocker is Professor of History and Director of the Women's Studies Program at Auburn University and author of Social Work and Social Order: The Settlement Movement in Two Industrial Cities, 1889–1930. She lives in Auburn, Alabama.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
Introduction
Part I. A Liminal Place: 1828–1869
1. Slocums, Jermains, Piersons—and a Sage
2. "Distinctly a class privilege": Troy Female Seminary, 1846–1847
3. "I do enjoy my independence": 1847–1858
4. A Bankruptcy, Three Funerals, and a Wedding: 1858–1869
Part II. Becoming Mrs. Russell Sage: 1869–1906
5. The Work of Benevolence? Mrs. Russell Sage, the Carlisle School, and Indian Reform
6. "I live for that work": Negotiating Identities at the New-York Woman's Hospital
7. "Some aggressive work": The Emma Willard Association and Educated Womanhood, 1891–1898
8. Converted! Parlor Suffrage and After
9. "Wiping her tears with the flag": Mrs. Russell Sage, Patriot, 1897–1906
Part III. "Just beginning to live": 1906–1918
10. "A kind of old age freedom"
11. Inventing the Russell Sage Foundation: 1907
12. "Women and education—there is the key"
13. "Nothing more for men's colleges": E. Lilian Todd and the Origins of Russell Sage College
14. "Splendid donation"
15. "Send what Miss Todd thinks best"
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Hull Professor of Women's Studies, Universityof California, Santa Barbara - Eileen Boris

This is a model biography. Mixing empathy with historical acumen, Ruth Crocker has uncovered the life of a woman who left few personal papers and hid behind her husband's name, but managed to emerge in her old age as one of the most influential philanthropists of the 20th century. . . . Here is finally the other side of the street, the upstairs long missing from a women's history long focused on the downstairs. . . . . Most impressive is Crocker's ability to fuse big historical themes with an individual story. The best discussion yet of Emma Willard's feminism of difference.

Director, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University - Stanley N. Katz

A major accomplishment . . . Prof. Crocker has done what many of us who studied the Russell Sage Foundation thought was impossible—to find untapped manuscript sources that reveal the active and crucial role played by Olivia Sage (a.k.a. Mrs. Russell Sage) in the creation and early management of America's first social welfare philanthropic foundation. . . . This is a story of strength and intentionality, and it is exceptionally well-told. Finally, we understand who Olivia Sage, the first important American philanthropist, was!

Professor of History and Women's Studies, Director, Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers Univers - Nancy Hewitt

Through this engaging biography of one of the most intriguing women of the Gilded Age, Mrs. Russell Sage, Ruth Crocker illuminates the critical role that female philanthropy and philanthropists played in the advancement of women in the twentieth century. Mrs. Russell Sage is a wonderful read and a major contribution to the literature on class and gender in American history.

Director, Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies, Universityof Maryland. - Sonya Michel

In this age of towering figures like Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, it is illuminating to examine the life of a woman who, a century ago, became one of the most noted philanthropists of her day. . . . Ruth Crocker's sensitive, richly documented, and beautifully written biography brings Sage and her times alive, reminding us that there is, indeed, value in visiting the neglected 'upstairs' of women's history.

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