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from John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, Volume 5, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999] pp. 194-196

      COLBY, Clara Dorothy Bewick (5 Aug. 1846 - Sept. 1916), woman's rights activist and publisher, was born in Gloucester, England, the daughter of Thomas Bewick and Clara Willingham. The Bewicks immigrated to the United States in 1849, settling on a farm in Windsor, Wisconsin; Clara and her maternal grandparents joined them in 1865. She entered the University of Wisconsin in 1865, initially enrolling in the "normal department" set up for women. However, with faculty assistance, she pursued the "classical course" designed for men. In 1869 she graduated as valedictorian of Wisconsin's first class of women to be awarded the bachelor of philosophy degree. She remained at the university until 1871, teaching Latin and history and taking graduate classes in French, Greek, and chemistry.

      Clara married Leonard Wright Colby in June 1871. They moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, where they lived until 1889. For the next four years, owing to Leonard's government appointment, they alternated between Beatrice and Washington, D. C. The couple adopted three children, two of whom survived to adulthood. Their third child was a daughter, an infant Sioux taken from the battle of Wounded Knee where Leonard directed the burial detail there as commander of the Nebraska National Guard. The preferred Sioux spelling of her name is Zintkala Numi, but she was called Zintka her whole life. After 1893 Clara Bewick Colby (as she was known throughout her life) established Washington as her permenant residence. Leonard eventually returned to Nebraska where the Colbys finalized a divorce in 1906 after a separation of ten years. Bewick Colby's daughter and divorce were frequent points of attack from her detractors inside and outside the woman's rights movement. The divorce also contributed to Bewick Colby's long-standing financial difficulties.

      Bewick Colby began her life through community service. She was instrumental in initiating a library, community theater, and Chautaqua Park for Beatrice. Her woman's rights activity began with the editing of a local newspaper column called "Woman's work." Her specific involvement with woman suffrage began in 1881 with her election as vice president at large for the newly organized Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association. In 1855 she became the group's president, a position she held until 1898.

      In 1883 Bewick Colby began her life's central undertaking, the publication of the Woman's Tribune, a suffrage newspaper. For its first year, it was the official publication of the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association; thereafter, it was maintained solely by Bewick Colby, who performed all tasks from editing to typesetting. Although Susan B. Anthony represented it as the organ of the National Woman Suffrage Association, the paper was never formally affiliated with any national group. However, as the second-longest-running woman suffrage newspaper, it was significant for several reasons. First, Bewick Colby designed the Tribune as a general circulation newspaper, an approach unique among suffrage publishers. For example, in 1898 she received the first war correspondent's pass issued to a woman publisher of a woman's paper. Second, the Tribune was probably the first woman's paper published by a woman. From 27 March to 3 April 1888, while reporting the activities of the International Council of Women, the Tribune achieved a daily circulation of 12,5000 copies. Finally, the Tribune was highly regarded by movement leaders. Elizabeth Cady Stanton considered it "the best suffrage paper ever published" and allowed it to serialize two of her most important works, her autobiography and The Woman's Bible. In 1904 Bewick Colby moved publication of the Tribune to Portland, Oregon, where she lived until the paper ceased in 1909.

      From 1887 to 1896 Bewick Colby also published, on an irregular schedule, the National Bulletin, an off-shoot pamphlet. Whereas the Tribune was circulated largely to supporters of woman's rights, the Bulletin was overtly designed as "propaganda." It was smaller and cheaper than its parent publication so that suffrage societies could circulate it more easily to nonsupporters. In spite of the fact that these publications were serious financial drains for Bewick Colby, she maintained her commitment to publishing. She had enunciated her commitment in the March 1885 edition of the Woman's Tribune: "The spoken word has its power for the day, but for building up a new line of thought in the popular heart there must be the written word, which shall be quietly digested and made part of the reader's own thought. Then the change in belief comes irresistibly."

      Bewick Colby was also an activist and speaker. She served as an officer of reform organizations such as the National Woman's Press Association, the International Women's Union, the Association for the Advancement of Women, the Federal Suffrage Association, and the International New Thought Alliance. As a member of the National (later National American) Woman Suffrage Association, she chaired the Federal Suffrage Committee and the Committee on Industrial Problems Relating to Women and Children, and she spoke regularly at conventions between 1886 and 1914. She worked in several state suffrage campaigns and testified before congressional committees. Ultimately she became one of the chief spokespersons for federal suffrage, arguing that woman suffrage was granted in preexisting constitutional provisions, thereby negating the need for state action of a constitutional amendment. She also worked for women abroad, severing as a delegate to the International Congress of Women (1899), the first International Moral Education Congress (1908), the first International Races Congress (1911), the International Woman suffrage Alliance (1913), and the International Peace Congress (1913).

      Bewick Colby spent the years 1909 to 1916 lecturing throughout the United States and Europe. This period saw the culmination of her interest in spirituality. She had served on the revising committee of Stanton's The Woman's Bible (1895), writing several of the commentaries. She was Stanton's staunchest defender when the work came under attack by suffragists. By the end of her life, Bewick Colby identified herself as a New Thought follower and supported herself by giving courses on spirituality. She maintained a link between religion and reform, as in her address "The Spiritual Significance of Woman Suffrage." She died in Palo Alto, California.

      Bewick Colby is representative of what Anthony called suffragist "lieutenants," women who, while not themselves national officers, influenced movement leaders and members. Anthony said that no one wrote, edited, or spoke better than Bewick Colby. What separated her from her more successful and visible counterparts was her commitment to marginal positions, fringe philosophies, and her own newspaper. She preferred to be a "free lance" rather than compromise her principles or her positions, ultimately sacrificing her family and her financial well-being to her cause.

      Bewick Colby's papers are in two primary collections. The larger is the Clara Bewick Colby Collection in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library, Madison. This library also holds a complete set of the Woman's Tribune and most available issues of the National Bulletin. The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif., has a substantial collection of Bewick Colby materials, primarily correspondence. The Tribune is available on microfilm from the Library of Congress. The Bulletin is available on microfiche in the Gerritsen collection of the University of Kansas. Important materials relevant to her work in Nebraska are in the Nebraska State Historical Society Library, Lincoln. The six-volume work, History of Woman Suffrage , ed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al. (1881-1922) contains many excerpts from Bewick Colby speeches.

      An important contemporary biography of Bewick Colby is by her associate Olympia Brown, Democratic Ideals: A Memorial Sketch of Clara B. Colby (1917). The sole comprehensive modern assessment is E. Claire Jerry, "Clara Bewick Colby and the Woman's Tribune Strategies of a Free Lance Movement Leader (Ph. D. diss, University of Kansas, 1986). The most inclusive of her works is Jerry, "Clara Bewick Colby," in Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925, ed. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (1993).

For More Information

      Prominent Wisconsin Women (1848-1905)

      Beatrice Public Library

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