Matilda Jewel Gage was born April 22nd, 1886, making her not yet three years old when her father’s sister, Maud Baum, Maud’s husband Frank, and their two sons moved to Aberdeen. Unlike the Baum boys who would grow to travel far from the Dakotah prairies, Matilda remained in Aberdeen until her death at age 99.
Matilda quickly became a favorite of Frank and Maud. As a college student she was a frequent visitor to their Chicago home and to their “Sign of the Goose” summer cottage in Macatawa, Michigan. She later spent a year at their home in California.
Through all her years she kept letters, news clippings, programs, and photos. She saved copies of the Saturday Evening Pioneer and put post cards the Baums sent from Europe in an album. It was Matilda who shared the heartbreaking memory of her baby sister Dorothy; she was only 12 when Dorothy died at five months. She had a old grade school assignment tucked away—a short story she wrote from memory based on one her Uncle Frank once told her.
Matilda’s attachment to Aberdeen, her vivid memories, and her penchant for saving ephemera led to her donating material to the Alexander Mitchel Library (now the K.O. Lee Library). That material became the foundation of the library’s L. Frank Baum Collection. It contains unique correspondence and the only known copies of many documents. In addition to preserving much about the Baums, Matilda also kept things associated with her grandmother, suffragist leader Matilda Joslyn Gage, enriching research into the legacies of both the Baum and Gage families. She received the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award from the International Wizard of Oz Club in 1972.
While the library has grown the collection since Matilda’s death in 1986, the opportunity to see material personally retained within the Baum family makes this collection especially valued by fans and researchers. Join us in Aberdeen; this collection can be seen nowhere else!
We also have 25 copies of Oz in Aberdeen (1997), the booklet cataloging the collection. The first 25 registrants for the collection will receive a copy with our thanks for signing up promptly!
