Daughters of the Declaration by Claire Gaudiani

Author:Claire Gaudiani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2011-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

She went so far in her piece as to assert “that ‘missionaries’ were needed among the idle rich [ladies] more than among any other class of citizens” to ensure that these teachings were understood. Such opinions expressed in public, we can imagine, did little to endear her to the wealthy ladies in whose circles she traveled with Russell.

Mrs. Sage was clearly ambivalent about wealth during her thirty years of marriage. She came from a modest background herself, having had to “work” as a teacher to support herself as a young woman. Once married to a wealthy man, she did not spend great amounts on her clothing or on entertaining to impress her friends. She seemed more anxious to support the propagation of her Christian faith through contributions to the Bible Society. But she did succumb to some social pressure among the established families in her husband’s business circles, such as the Rock-efellers, Vanderbilts, and Morgans. She spent both time and money to document her family’s connections (on her mother’s side) to the original settlers on the Mayflower voyage.

Olivia Sage had enjoyed an exceptional education for a middle-class woman in the 1840s. Despite her family’s modest resources, she was enabled by her uncle to attend the Troy Female Seminary, later known as the Emma Willard School for Girls. This institution was recognized for its academic rigor, insisting that the young women study, and then be publicly examined by faculty, in classical and modern languages, history, mathematics, and even human physiology. Olivia surely became accustomed to using her mind as a young woman and was given to speaking her mind on numerous topics throughout her life. A friend commented that her home “looked like the newsroom of a daily paper.” She had serious problems with her eyesight by the time of her husband’s death, but no matter, she struggled through mountains of newspapers and magazines as well as the annual reports of countless charitable societies and associations, often having material read aloud to her. Once she had a fortune to back up her opinions, she was ready to let her money do some talking as well.

Despite her reserved personal nature and her advanced age, she prepared to back up her call to women of wealth with her own actions. She invited Robert de Forest,28 her family lawyer, to advise her. Together they arrived at an original idea: She would immediately create an independent foundation with a broad purpose, “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States of America.” She would invest $10 million to launch the effort. Moreover, the Russell Sage Foundation (as she insisted it would be called) would include four women among its nine trustees: Sage herself, Helen M. Gould (daughter of Jay Gould, a former business partner of her late husband), Gertrude S. Rice (a founder of the Charity Organizations Society of New York City with Josephine Lowell), and Louisa Schuyler (mentor to the young Grace Dodge).29

No one could accuse Mrs. Sage of failing to think big.

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