page_title: Maud Gage Baum
section_title: Marriage proposal and wedding
hierarchical_section_title: Maud Gage Baum / Life with L. Frank Baum / Marriage proposal and wedding
caption_attribution_description: English: Maud Gage Baum's wedding picture, 1882
context_page_description: Maud Gage Baum was the wife of American children's publisher L. Frank Baum. Her mother was the suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. In her early life, she attended a boys' high school.
  Maud lived in Fayetteville, New York, with her aging parents until she married Frank in 1882, sacrificing her college education at Cornell University. At the onset of their marriage, she accompanied her husband's acting troupe throughout the United States. After she became pregnant, Maud and Frank settled down in a rented house, where she gave birth to Frank Joslyn in 1883. Complications arising from giving birth to her second son Robert Stanton in 1886 caused Maud to become afflicted with peritonitis. Ill for two years, she found solace in visiting her mother and siblings. In 1889 and 1891, she gave birth to Harry Neal and Kenneth Gage, respectively.
  Described by her children as a no-nonsense mother, Maud took charge of the family finances and the disciplining of her children. She was their primary caretaker because her husband's business obligations frequently led to his being away for weeks at a time.
context_section_description: A sophomore at Cornell University, Maud made a significant sacrifice when she accepted Frank's marriage proposal. She was twenty, and he was twenty-five.  Maud's mother, suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, initially disapproved of Maud's marrying Frank.  Matilda considered Frank an "impractical dreamer" who would be unable support a family.  Matilda, who once dreamed of being a doctor and was not accepted by any medical schools, was distressed that her daughter would sacrifice the chance of higher education to marry a traveling actor.  After Maud accepted Frank's proposal, she asked him to remain in her front parlor while she broke the news to her mother in the back parlor.  In a conversation that Frank "could not help hearing", he listened to Matilda's harsh disapproval.
  Matilda told Maud she refused to "have my daughter be a darned fool and marry an actor".  Maud retorted, "All right, mother, if you feel that way about it, good bye."  After her mother requested clarification, she said, "I'm going to marry Frank, so, naturally you don't want a darned fool around the house."  Upon recognizing that Maud would marry Frank whether or not she supported her, Matilda laughed and acquiesced.  On November 9, 1882, Maud and Frank were married by W. H. Hawley, the minister of Fayetteville Baptist Church.  The wedding ceremony was held in the parlor of Matilda's home, which was packed with people.  Many relatives and friends of Matilda attended the wedding, including Maud's three sisters and women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband Henry Stanton.  Frank's parents, Benjamin and Cynthia, and his sisters, Hattie and Mattie, also attended the wedding.  The parlor was so crowded that the hired string quartet had to play upstairs.  The local paper praised the marriage ceremony as "one of equality".  Whereas most marriages of the era had the bride's wedding vows include a pledge to obey her husband, the local paper said "the promises required of the bride [were] precisely the same as those required of the groom".  The couple honeymooned in Saratoga Springs, New York, whereupon they passed Thanksgiving with their relatives.
caption: Maud's wedding picture in November 1882
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