Charlotte Ives Cobb Godbe Kirby
Charlotte Ives Cobb Kirby (August 3, 1836– January 24, 1908) was an influential and radical women's rights activist and temperance advocate in the state of Utah as well as a well-known national figure.
Charlotte, previously a plural wife herself, spoke out against polygamy and gained much opposition from polygamous women suffragists because of it.
[1][3] Charlotte Ives Cobb Kirby died on January 24, 1908, at age 71 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Additionally, the Edmunds-Tucker Act stripped all Utah women of their voting rights because suffrage did not end polygamy.
Suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony attempted to clarify their intentions of solely advocating women's suffrage, not polygamy, and continued fighting for the vote in the west.
As the Utah territorial legislature proposed a state constitution that made polygamy illegal and did not include women's right to vote, radical suffragists took a stand against this.
[7] Charlotte was a prominent figure in the Utah Territory Woman Suffrage Association by writing articles and corresponding with other suffragists and local and national governments.
She expressed her feelings that Charlotte could not be a representative for the women in Utah because she did not advocate for polygamy or the LDS Church before woman's suffrage.
[10] The Salt Lake Herald-Republican newspaper shared the success Charlotte had giving a lecture on temperance in New York on March 14, 1881.
[1] Augusta listened to an LDS (Mormon) leader preach in Boston and converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints despite her husband's disapproval; after many years of practicing her religion secretly, Augusta left her husband and five of her children in the 1840s to join the LDS community in Nauvoo, Illinois.
[11] In Nauvoo, Augusta married Brigham Young as one of his first plural wives and was sealed (part of the marriage ceremony of the LDS Church) for eternity in the Mormon temple.
In April 1869, Charlotte was married to William S. Godbe as his fourth wife, and Brigham Young performed the sealing ceremony.
[7] In the fall of 1869, Godbe was excommunicated from the LDS church, along with Elias L. T. Harrison, for his criticisms of Brigham Young's economic policies and his adoption of spiritualism.
[3] After his excommunication, Godbe and his followers, including Thomas B. Stenhouse and Edward Tullidge, started the Church of Zion, a group often referred to as the Godbeites.
[14] Notably, they were helpful in creating a relationship with Eastern suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; when these two women came to visit Utah for the first time in 1871, it was at the invitation of the Godbeites.
