SUSANNA PHELPS GAGH, PH.B. 
DECEMBER 26, 1857: OcTOBER 5, 1915 
Mrs. Gage was born and spent her childhood and early youth 
in Morrisville, the county seat of Madison County, New York. 
The father, Henry S. Phelps, was also born in Madison 
County, but his father, John, and grandfather, Elijah Phelps, 
came from New England where their ancestors were among the 
earliest English settlers. The grandfather was a soldier of the 
Revolutionary War. The father, John Phelps, died before the 
children had reached manhood. This made it necessary for the 
boy, who was to be the father of the subject of this sketch, to 
play the part of a man early in life. 
A part of his boyhood and youth were spent in Cortland 
County in and near Cortland, but his mature life was lived in 
the village of Morrisville where he was a leading merchant, and 
a citizen respected and trusted by the community. 
The mother, Mary Austin Phelps, was a native of Cortland 
County, and like the father was of New England descent, with 
Scottish as well as English blood. Her father was a prosperous 
farmer and mill owner in the rich Cortland valley and could 
give his children more of the comforts of life and especially the 
advantages of the best education then available for young 
women. But, as was the custom in those days, the education 
was not alone in books but in the real work of the household and 
the art of conducting a home, which could come only with a 
perfect familiarity with all the work which makes such a home 
possible. She early became a teacher, and had a genius for 
starting young people on the road to learning; and it was a 
sound start she gave them; no shirking was permitted and no 
slipshod work accepted. She taught several years (1847-1854) 
in the South, and saw that region from the inside in what seemed 
its most prosperous period of slavery and chivalry. 
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