Margaret Olivia Slocum, called Olivia, was born on September 8, 1828 in Syracuse, New York, United States. She was the daughter of Joseph and Margaret Pierson (Jermain) Slocum. She was the descendant of Anthony Slocombe or Slocum, an English Quaker who emigrated to Massachusetts before 1637. Her father was a well-to-do merchant, a state assemblyman, and agent of the government to introduce American agricultural implements and methods into Russia.
After studying in local schools until she was eighteen, she attended Mrs. Emma Willard's school, the Troy Female Seminary, now Russell Sage College, from which she graduated in 1847. Later, because of the financial reverses of her father, she taught at Chestnut Street Seminary, later Ogontz School, of Philadelphia for two years and thereafter from time to time as her health permitted.
In the North American Review of November 1905 she published an article "Opportunities and Responsibilities of Leisured Women, " which reflects many of her religious and social ideas. Upon her husband's death in 1906 she inherited by his will practically the whole of his fortune, something more than $63, 000, 000, and at once she began to distribute this money. The wide range of the objects of her charity is indicative of the character and variety of her interests. She was especially interested in the Woman's Hospital of New York, in the New York Exchange for Woman's Work, and in home and foreign missions. She gave the money to found the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology in connection with the city hospital of New York on Blackwell's Island, as well as to support the American Seamen's Friend Society, Home for the Friendless, Mount Sinai Hospital, and various relief, social, and educational agencies.
She made substantial donations to the Y. W. C. A. , to naval and railway Y. M. C. A. building projects, and to the international Y. M. C. A. She also bought 70, 000 acres on Marsh Island in Louisiana for a bird refuge and made large bequests to the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, the American Natural History Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum. The enumeration in her will of eighteen colleges, the Northfield Seminary, the Northfield Training School, Tuskeegee Normal and Industrial Institute, the Idaho Industrial Institute, bespeak her interest in education. She made an initial gift of $250, 000. 00 to Emma Willard School for practical arts, which was supplemented until it totalled $1, 000, 000 and resulted in the founding of Russell Sage College in 1918.
The Sage Foundation, at that time heralded as the largest single gift to philanthropy in the history of the world, received a third of all her gifts and bequests.
She died in New York City.
She was known for her contributions to education and progressive causes. Sage strongly supported education, both with program and building grants to Syracuse and other universities. She founded Russell Sage College in 1916, as well as an endowing program for women. Perhaps her greatest distinction was her gift of $10, 000, 000 to the Russell Sage Foundation for the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States. Olivia Sage also organized the effort to fund and build the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor. It was named in honor of her grandfather.
She provided large donations in her will to a variety of churches, missions, and other religious causes.
She grasped many contemporary ideas: she believed in woman's suffrage, in practical education such as manual training schools for the children of wage-earners, in specialization in education for the self-supporting woman. She identified herself with every community in which she lived, and, especially after the inheritance of her husband's fortune made it possible, she gave liberally and discriminatingly to each of those communities.
She was convinced that the wisest aid was to provide for the less fortunate a good environment, protect them from the unscrupulous, and give them opportunity for self-support and individual responsibility.
She was always desirous of helping the unfortunate.
In 1869 she became the second wife of Russell Sage, who laid the foundation for his financial success in Watervliet and Troy. They had no children. During her married life she was a devoted wife.
