E. Jane Gay

E. Jane Gay (July 27, 1830 – March 15, 1919) was an American woman who devoted her life to social reform and photography. She is notable for her photographs of the Nez Perce, which she took during a federal expedition led by American ethnologist and anthropologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher.

Early life Elizabeth Jane Gay was born in 1830 in Nashua, New Hampshire, to Ziba Gay (1796–1864) and Mary (Kennedy) Gay (1798–1873). She received her education at the Brooklyn Female Academy in New York, where she first befriended Alice Cunningham Fletcher. Gay's education at the Academy included the sciences, religion, and homemaking.

From 1861 through 1865, Gay worked as a nurse with Dorothea Dix during the Civil War. In 1909, she worked with her niece to publish the letters written during that expedition, along with half of the photographs, in a two-volume book titled Choup-nit-ki: With the Nez Percés. After World War One, Sturge used some of her inheritance to have a cottage built in Winscombe, Somerset, where she and Gay could live out their final years; Gay died in this cottage, called "Kamiah", on March 15, 1919.

In multiple texts Gay is referred to as Fletcher's "companion", living in "domestic partnership" or "Boston Marriage" with her.