Walkabout: Gracious and Generous Giving, Part 2

Read Part 1 of this story.

In 1901, Helen Miller Gould commissioned Stanford White to built the Gould Memorial Library and the Hall of Fame of Great Americans, on the uptown campus of NYU, in the Bronx. At her side at the dedication was her friend, Mrs. Russell Sage.

In 1902, when Helen Miller Gould donated the Sands Street YMCA, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to the Navy, she sat on the stage with her closest friend, Mrs. Russell Sage.

Later that same year when Miss Gould donated the bulk of the money to build the Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless in the Bronx, Mrs. Sage was right there with her on the stage.

They must have been an unusual pair, perhaps even mistaken for mother and daughter by those not familiar with New York’s society during the height of the Gilded Age.

But they were not related, they were the closest of friends, although over forty years apart in age, and two of the most generous women to ever call New York home.

We met Miss Helen Gould, daughter of industrialist Jay Gould last time. Her friend, Mrs. Russell Sage, would surpass the generous spirit of her friend, and be known as one of the most important philanthropists of the 20th century.

While Helen Gould was born to wealth, Margaret Olivia Slocum was born with lineage. Born in Syracuse, NY, in 1828, she was the daughter of an upstate inventor who was a direct descendant of the Mayflower legend, Miles Standish.

They were not wealthy, but her parents were able to send her to college at the Emma Willard Female Seminary in Troy, NY, a progressive school for women.

She became a teacher and throughout the rest of her life was interested in education, especially for women. She supported herself as a teacher, and governess, and in her 40’s met and married a Troy businessman named Russell Sage.

It’s unknown why she married him, as Russell Sage was one of the most hated men of the Victorian Age. He gained an enormous fortune as a financier and partner of Jay Gould’s railroad ventures, and was said to be even better than Gould in his stock market picks.

He had been a widower for some time when he married Olivia, and they would be married for 37 years, although it is widely held that the marriage was never consummated, and Sage continuously pined over his dead wife.

Russell Sage was legendary among his fellow robber barons for his cheapness and miserly qualities. He was forced to move from upstate Troy for cheating on his business partners there.

His mansion on Fifth Avenue and 49th St. was filled with cheap furniture, his wife was given little money for clothing or shopping, so she always was out of style. He refused to travel or spend money.

Olivia was probably the richest woman in New York who had to borrow a friend’s coach to go anywhere, as Sage refused to keep a coach. As could be expected, he also did not believe in charitable giving.

He allowed her an allowance, from which she gave generously to her Alma Mater, the Emma Willard School, and to church based charities.

She sat on committees for women’s rights and women’s charities, and accompanied her husband (probably dragged him) to various charitable events, many in Brooklyn, which were noted in detail by the Brooklyn Eagle.

As Russell Sage got on in years, he would eventually hand his finances and affairs over to Olivia, who proved to be his equal in managing his money.

He finally died in 1906, leaving his fortune of over $70 million dollars solely to his wife, making her the richest woman in America at that time. Today, that figure would come to well over a billion dollars.

Olivia Sage always preferred to be called Mrs. Russell Sage, and she is never referred to in any other way. When Russell passed on at the age of 90, they had been married for 37 years.

At the age of 79 herself, she promptly began giving his money away, establishing the Russell Sage Foundation and endowing it with $10 million, adding $5 million more in 1918.

Old Russell must have been spinning in his grave. She spent the rest of her life in philanthropic giving. Thousands of people wrote letters to her asking for money or for her help, and in addition to her larger gifts to institutions and organizations, she also helped individuals and smaller causes.

Within ten years of her husband’s death, she gave Yale University $650,000, Cornell $300,00, and built a women’s dorm at Vassar.

She also built the Russell Sage College for Women in Troy, and a new building for the Troy Female Seminary, now called the Emma Willard School.

In 1912, she bought Marsh Island in the Gulf of Mexico, and turned it into a bird reserve. She also gave to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and built the Russell Sage Foundation Homes in Forest Hills, Queens.

By 1915, she had given away over $23 million. She also established the John Jermain Library in Sag Harbor, named after her grandfather who had fought in the American Revolution.

She was religious, although perhaps not as religious as her friend, Helen Gould. The two must have met when Helen was a child, when her husband Russell was partners with Jay Gould, as masters of the late 19th century’s stock market.

It would be interesting to know what brought them together as such fast friends, years later, perhaps their shared love of giving, especially to organizations that championed the education of women.

Perhaps Mrs. Sage felt motherly towards the much younger Miss Gould, who like her, cared little for the life of a rich New York woman, most of whom spent their days visiting social equals, shopping, lunching, and the like.

Both women gave generously to their favorite causes, many of them in Brooklyn, most of the institutions and buildings now long gone.

Mrs. Russell Sage was a character. Proud of her heritage, she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Mayflower Society.

She had no problem telling people what to do, and using her age and her power to make a point. She resigned from the Mayflower Society when the men refused to stop smoking during their meetings.

She wasn’t perfect. She did not directly support very many specifically Negro causes or organizations, they were in another world to her, a position held by many in early 20th century high society, yet her money has helped millions of people, including black people, in education and the social sciences.

Perhaps, knowing full well that her husband of 37 years was a miserly Scrooge, she named her foundation after him to irritate him constantly in the afterlife.

Or maybe she loved him and wanted his name to live on, we’ll never know. The Russell Sage Foundation would grow, and dedicate itself to social reform, education and the betterment of women and children.

She invested the foundation’s money wisely, and the fund grew over the years. Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage died in 1918, at the age of ninety.

Today, although not a household name like the Ford, Rockefeller or Carnegie Foundations, the Russell Sage Foundation is still a major source of grants and programs, mostly in the field of social work, and the betterment of society.

Since World War II, the Foundation has devoted its efforts to strengthening the social sciences as a means of achieving more informed and rational social policy.

Her mansion on Fifth Avenue is long gone, her name best known to scholars of American Women’s Studies, but her buildings on campuses across the country, the Russell Sage College in Albany, her generosity in her mother’s hometown of Sag Harbor, scholarships galore, donations to the Met and other museums, and her friendship and financial support of her good friend Helen Gould’s charitable causes in every borough of the city make Mrs. Russell Sage an American icon.

In Brooklyn, her name appears almost monthly in the Brooklyn Eagle, as well as the Times, as she participated in charitable events, and added her money and influence to local charities.

In the society she lived in, her presence and influence encouraged wealthy Brooklyn society ladies to give and take part in her activities, so they could count her as a friend and acquaintance, and perhaps get the ultimate honor of having her come to call, or to lunch.

Through their subsequent generosity, as well as her own, a lot of Brooklynites had better lives. Mrs. Russell Sage was some lady.

Ruth Crocker has written often about Mrs. Russell Sage, as well as other women of the late Victorian age in America. She is a professor of Women’s Studies at Auburn University in Alabama. Her book, Mrs. Russell Sage is the basis of everyone else’s writing on Mrs. Sage.