Biography

Elizabeth "E." Jane Gay was born in Nashua, New Hampshire to Ziba and Mary (Kennedy) Gay. She attended school in New York and then opened her own school for children in Macon, Georgia with Catherine Melville in 1856. In 1860, the two women started a school for young children in Washington, D.C. From the start of the American Civil War through its duration, Gay worked with Dorothea Dix in Washington, D.C. After the war, Gay served as a tutor to President Johnson's children and as a civil clerk. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Gay joined her former classmate and friend Alice Cunningham Fletcher on a trip west on behalf of the Department of Interior to apportion lands to Native American tribes. Gay served as an official photographer. Later, Gay published a two volume work entitled Choup-nit-ki, With the Nez Perce, describing her experience and featuring her photographs. She died in England. She is referenced in Frances "Fanny" Seward's 1866 diary as a passenger on a tour aboard the transport ship "Ascutney," in which Fanny also participated.