ountry places inferior. A log-cabin in the woods was the Seminary where
Frances Barker acquired the rudiments of education. The wolf's howl, the
panther's cry, the hiss of the copperhead, often filled her young heart
with terror.

Her father was a farmer, and the stirring life of a farmer's daughter in
a new country, fell to her lot. To spin the garments she wore, to make
cheese and butter, were parts of her education, while to lend a hand at
out-door labor, perhaps helped her to acquire that vigor of body and
brain for which she has since been distinguished.

She made frequent visits to her grandmother, Mrs. Mary Bancroft Dana,
whose home was at Belpre, Ohio, upon the Ohio river, only one mile from
Parkersburg, Virginia, and opposite Blennerhasset's Island. Mrs. Dana,
was even then a radical on the subject of slavery, and Frances learned
from her to hate the word, and all it represented. She never was on the
side of the oppressor, and was frequently laughed at in childhood, for
her sympathy with the poor fugitives from slavery, who often found their
way to the neighborhood in which she lived, seeking kindness and charity
of the people.

It had not then become a crime to give a crust of bread, or a cup of
milk to the "fugitive from labor," and Mrs. Barker, a noble,
true-thinking woman, often sent her daughter on errands of mercy to the
neighboring cabins, where the poor creatures sought shelter, and would
tarry a few days, often to be caught and sent back to their masters.
Thus she early became familiarized with their sufferings, and their
wants.

At the age of twenty, on the 1st of January, 1829, Frances Barker became
the wife of James L. Gage, a lawyer of McConnellsville, Ohio, a good and
noble man, whose hatred of the system of slavery in the South, was
surpassed only by that of the great apostle of anti-slavery, Garrison,
himself. Moral integrity, and unflinching fidelity to the cause of
humanity, were leading traits of his character.

A family of eight children engrossed much of their attention for many
years, but still they found time to wage moral warfare with the
stupendous wrong that surrounded them, and bore down their friends and
neighbors beneath the leaden weight of its prejudice and injustice.

Mrs. Gage records that "it never seemed to her to require any sacrifice
to resist the popular will upon the subjects of freedom for the slave,
temperance, or even the rights of woman." They were all so manifes