Clara Bewick Colby

Did You Know?

• In 1891, her husband Leonard adopted a Sioux baby, Zintkala Nuni (Lost Bird), found on the Wounded Knee Battlefield.
• Colby served as a delegate to the International Congress of Women in London (1899), the First International Moral Education Congress (London, 1908), and the First International Peace Congress (London, 1911).

Family, education and intellectual development

Colby was born in Gloucester, England, the daughter of Thomas and Clara Willingham (Chilton) Bewick. When she was eight, her family settled near Windsor, Wisconsin. With few opportunities for district schooling, she prepared herself to teach in country schools, aided by her father's encouragement of evening study. Her grandfather, Thomas Bewick, was a notable naturalist and engraver.

At nineteen, she moved to Madison, Wisconsin to live with her grandparents, Stephen Chilton and Clara Medhurst Willingham Chilton, and entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She helped secure the admission of women and the adoption of co-education at the university. Graduating in 1869 as valedictorian and Phi Beta Kappa in the first class of women graduates, she then taught history and Latin at the institution while pursuing graduate studies.

She married Leonard Wright Colby in June 1871 and moved to Beatrice, Nebraska the following year. Amid pioneer life, she established Beatrice's free public library in 1873.

Activist

Clara Bewick Colby began her publishing career by editing the "Woman's Work" section of the Beatrice Express. In 1883, she launched her own periodical, The Woman's Tribune, which she founded, published, and edited. The Tribune earned a prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition for its clean, professional appearance and became the official voice of the National Woman Suffrage Association. A colleague of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Colby gave lectures to general audiences and testified before legislative and congressional committees.

During the 1888 International Council of Women in Washington, D.C., she issued the Tribune daily, likely the first daily newspaper run by a woman. She led the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association from 1885 to 1898 and chaired the Federal Suffrage Committee in 1895. During the Spanish-American War, she spoke in support of soldiers and was appointed as the first female war correspondent. In 1915, she promoted peace at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

Personal life

Clara Bewick Colby wed Leonard in 1872 and relocated to Beatrice, Nebraska. The couple adopted a boy named Clarence from an Orphan Train in 1885. In 1891, while Clara was traveling for suffrage lectures, Leonard brought home a Sioux infant, Zintkala Nuni (Lost Bird), from the Battle of Wounded Knee and adopted her. Leonard later left with Lost Bird’s nursemaid, and the Colbys divorced in 1906. Clara kept custody of Lost Bird, who was sent to Indian boarding schools until age seventeen. A lifelong Congregationalist, Colby also held an honorary role in the International New Thought Alliance. She died of pneumonia and myocarditis at her sister’s home in Palo Alto in 1916, and her ashes were interred in Windsor.