Published June 7, 2025
By Nancy Benz
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie was born in 1866 in Macomb, Illinois, during the heart of the Reconstruction era. The daughter of James Magie, a newspaper publisher and an abolitionist who once traveled with Abraham Lincoln during the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lizzie grew up in a home where ideas, especially about fairness, freedom, and reform were encouraged. Her upbringing shaped her into an independent thinker, inventor, writer, and one of the earliest women in America to receive a patent for a board game. Yet, her name would be buried in the history books for nearly a century.
In an era when women had limited rights and even fewer opportunities in the public sphere, Lizzie managed to carve out a life that was both unconventional and intellectually vibrant. She worked as a stenographer and typist, and later as a writer and editor. But her real passion was economics. She was a follower of the political economist Henry George, whose 1879 bestseller Progress and Poverty argued that inequality stemmed largely from land ownership being concentrated in the hands of the few. George’s proposed solution was the “single tax” on land value. It was a way to even the playing field by ensuring land belonged to the community, not just the landlords.
Lizzie believed in these ideas so strongly that she devised a novel way to teach them to the public: a board game. In 1904, she was granted U.S. Patent No. 748,626 for The Landlord’s Game. The design of her game featured a square board with properties players could buy, rent, or lose, depending on their financial luck and strategy.
The game had two sets of rules. One set mirrored the system Henry George railed against—players bought up property, collected rent, and aimed to bankrupt their opponents. This version inevitably ended with one player in control of everything. The second set was cooperative and emphasized shared prosperity, designed to show that society could thrive if wealth was distributed more fairly. Her goal was not entertainment alone; it was education. She wanted players to experience firsthand how monopolies hurt communities and how an alternative system could benefit all.
Lizzie sold her game through small outlets and sometimes manufactured boards herself. It caught on in progressive circles, particularly among Georgists, Quakers, and college professors. Homemade versions spread among friends and families, passed along with modified rules and new names. One such adaptation would eventually reach an unemployed salesman named Charles Darrow during the Great Depression.
In the early 1930s, Darrow began selling his version of the game. It was essentially Lizzie’s original, but with the Georgist message stripped away. He replaced her original street names with Atlantic City properties and called it Monopoly. The game became wildly popular, especially during the bleak economic years when fantasies of wealth provided a bit of escapism. When Parker Brothers picked it up in 1935, Monopoly became a national sensation.
But Parker Brothers soon learned that Darrow hadn’t invented the game. Tracing it back, they discovered Lizzie Magie and The Landlord’s Game. Fearing legal trouble, they purchased the rights to her patent for just $500. Lizzie did not receive royalties or credit and was largely written out of the game’s origin story. Meanwhile, Darrow was celebrated as a self-made genius, the great American inventor of the world’s most popular board game.
In a 1936 interview with The Washington Post, Lizzie expressed her disappointment. “There is nothing new under the sun,” she said. “I invented this game all by myself.” But the damage was done. For decades, history remembered Darrow as the creator of Monopoly, while Lizzie’s radical, educational version was forgotten.
The truth remained buried until the 1970s, when economics professor Ralph Anspach, creator of a game called Anti-Monopoly, was sued by Parker Brothers. While defending his right to publish his game, Anspach uncovered Lizzie’s original patent and documents. This discovery eventually helped journalist Mary Pilon pen her 2015 book The Monopolists, which chronicled the long, complicated journey of The Landlord’s Game and the erasure of its true inventor.
Pilon’s research confirmed that Lizzie Magie wasn’t just an inventor; she was a political visionary who used a game to critique economic inequality, long before that was a common practice. Her game didn’t just entertain. It provoked thought, encouraged debate, and invited players to imagine a different economic world.
Today, Lizzie is finally receiving the recognition she deserves, especially in the place where her story began. In 2025, Macomb unveiled a large-scale, public tribute to her legacy: a life-sized Monopoly board installed on the sidewalks of the town square. Each square represents a local business or civic institution, and visitors can walk the board just like players move their tokens in the game. In the center of the square stands a bronze statue of Lizzie, created by sculptor Jaci Willis. The statue shows Lizzie holding a board that is half The Landlord’s Game and half Monopoly, symbolizing her original creation and the commercial game it inspired.
This installation is more than just a quirky tourist attraction. It’s a historical correction. It celebrates a woman who challenged the status quo with nothing more than a board game and a brilliant idea. It also connects the people of Macomb with their local history in a living, interactive way.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie died in 1948, following her husband, Albert Wallace Phillips, in Virginia. She passed away in obscurity, never fully aware of the global impact her idea would have. Yet today, every time someone passes Go, buys Boardwalk, or curses a rent payment on a little green house, they are walking a path first drawn by Lizzie—an inventor from Macomb who wanted the world to see that monopoly wasn’t just a game. It was a warning. Thanks to historians, journalists, and a town proud of its own, her name is being spoken once again—not just as the inventor of a board game, but as a woman ahead of her time who believed that games could shape the way we think about justice, fairness, and community.
Nancy Benz is the Museum & Collections Manager at the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County. She obtained a master’s degree in American history from Western Illinois University in 2018 and has amassed over 10 years of experience in public history and museum work.
Sources:
Anspach, Ralph. The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle. San Francisco: Consumers Union, 1983.
Husar, Edward. “Monopoly’s Origin Traced to Macomb.” Quincy Herald Whig. Published March 4, 2015, 3. quincypublicil.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/?i=f&d=01011838-12312021&e=lizzie magie&m=between&ord=e1&fn=quincy_herald_whig_usa_illinois_quincy_20150304_english_3&df=1&dt=2
Magie, Elizabeth J. The Landlord’s Game. U.S. Patent 748,626, filed January 5, 1903, and issued January 5, 1904. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. https://patents.google.com/patent/US748626A/en
“Lizzie Was a Trailblazer: Macombopoly Unveiled as the World’s Largest Monopoly Board.” WGEM, May 9, 2024. https://www.wgem.com/2024/05/09/lizzie-was-trailblazer-macombopoly-unveiled-becoming-worlds-largest-monopoly-board/.
“Monopoly’s Inventor: The Progressive Who Didn’t Pass Go.” The Washington Post, January 28, 1936.
Pilon, Mary. The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Roos, Dave. “The Anti-Capitalist Origins of the Board Game Monopoly.” History.com. Published March 19, 2020. https://www.history.com/news/monopoly-game-inventor-lizzie-magie
“Who Invented Monopoly?” Smithsonian Magazine. Published February 13, 2015. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/monopoly-true-story-180954874/
