Mary Elizabeth Woolley Chamberlain (January 31, 1870 – August 20, 1953) was an American politician who served as the board president of Kanab, Utah, from 1912 to 1914.

She presided over an all-women town board, and had earlier been elected as Utah's first female county clerk in 1896.

[2][4][5] She was elected under the name Mary W. Howard, as she had married Thomas Chamberlain as his sixth wife when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was ending the practice of plural marriage.

Mary's letter to Gates, who called her "Mayor", was published in the July 1914 Improvement Era.

When her husband Thomas Chamberlain died, she had to support herself and her children by selling homemade goods to travelers and offering up her home as a board house.

She remained active in church callings and in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, moving frequently and living in Provo and Salt Lake City.

[2] Chamberlain and her town board took office on January 2, 1912, and reportedly had meetings in their own homes rather than at the courthouse.

[1] During a time when women were expected to stay at home and raise a family rather than work, all five newly elected politicians had families ranging from two to seven children, and were expected to simultaneously tend to their individual housework and church duties while in office.

On February 23, they passed an act requiring traveling salesman to pay a tax per day to conduct business in order to protect local merchants.

[4] Mary Woolley married Thomas Chamberlain in Mexico (his sixth and last wife) on August 6, 1900.

[1] It was 10 years after Wilford Woodruff declared the Manifesto to end plural marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In 1901, she used the name "Mrs. Thomas" as opposed to her legal surname "Chamberlain" to avoid persecution as her husband had spent 1888–1889 in the state penitentiary for unlawful cohabitation.

She quit her job to go into hiding in Salt Lake City due to being pregnant with her first son as a result of a plural marriage.

[3]: 11 Mary E. Woolley Chamberlain's autobiography resides in L. Tom Perry Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University.