Dewitt Clinton Gage was born on August 28, 1820, in Bellona, New York, to Martin and Abigail Gage. His father was a farmer who managed a general store. Growing up, one early biographer noted, Gage worked in his father’s store and devoted the winters to “acquiring an education in the district school.” He “supplemented the instruction there…by a year’s study in the academy at Lima.” His father died in 1841, and Gage spent the next few years caring for his mother and siblings.
He married Catherine Glover around 1844, and they had at least three children: William, born on April 11, 1847; Henry, born on December 25, 1852; and James, born on March 22, 1856. They lived in Italy Hill, New York, and Gage worked as a farmer. They moved to Gorham, New York, in the 1840s, and he earned a living as a merchant there. According to his biographer, “neither the life of a farmer nor that of a merchant was congenial to his nature,” and he began working as a lawyer in the early 1850s.
He travelled through Iowa and Illinois before moving to Saginaw, Michigan, around 1855. He became a prominent lawyer there, and he served as private secretary for Republican governor Kinsley Bingham. By 1860, he owned $2,000 of real estate and $250 of personal property, and he employed at least one Irish servant. President Abraham Lincoln appointed him postmaster of East Saginaw in March 1861. Gage supported the Republican Party, and he was reportedly a “prominent and powerful leader of his party. He was noted as an organizer and campaigner of unusual ability.”
In February 1864, he reported happily that the "north seems to be getting more and more in earnest--and settling down to fight it out--to conquor a lasting peace." By 1870, his wealth had grown to $60,000 of real estate and $6,000 of personal property. In 1880, Governor Charles Crosswell appointed him judge of the Saginaw Circuit Court. His wife died in 1882, and he passed away of a “serious bilious attack” in Saginaw on July 31, 1887.
Image: Dewitt Clinton Gage (George Irving Reed, Bench and Bar of Michigan)