ordinarily trying period, was marked by a conservative policy, looking toward the strengthening of the gold standard, the securing of greater flexibility in the currency, and a more perfect adjustment of the relations between the government and the National banks. Lyman J. Gage was instrumental in creating the San Diego Panama–California Exposition of 1915. Later he was president of the committee to preserve the Expo's characteristic buildings in Balboa Park. Final years Gage was one of the 30 founding members of the Simplified Spelling Board, founded in 1906 by Andrew Carnegie to make English easier to learn and understand through changes in the orthography of the English language. He died of pneumonia in San Diego, California in 1927, and is buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago. Private life Lyman Gage married Sarah Etheridge in 1864, and the couple had four children: Locke, Eli Alexander, Fanny, and Mary; only Eli survived to adulthood. Sarah died in 1874, when son Eli was 7 years old. Eli Gage married Sophie R Weare in 1893 in Iowa, but committed suicide in Seattle in 1906 leaving his wife and two young sons, Lyman J. Gage II (1896-1954) and John Weare Gage (1900-1962). After Sarah's death, Lyman Gage married Cornelia Lansing, who died childless in 1901. In the late 1910s, Gage remarried a third time with Frances Ballou, and the two had a son, Lyman Judson. Frances died in 1943, around 16 years after Gage's death. In 1906, Gage indulged his longtime interest in metaphysical phenomena by purchasing property on and subsequently living at Lomaland, a Theosophist retreat in Southern California. Though this came as something of a shock to the American public, those who knew him privately were not surprised, as Gage had previously studied spiritualism, astrology, and prophesied the death of his own brother through a "psychic flash". Notes Sources 1836 births 1927 deaths 19th-century American politicians 20th-century American politicians People from Madison County, New York New York (state) Republicans Burials at Rosehill Cemetery United States Secretaries of the Treasury Theodore Roosevelt administration cabinet members McKinley administration cabinet members Politicians from Rome, New York California Republicans