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 was born in Massachusetts and at seven years of age moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, with her mother, an early member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). There, without divorcing father Henry Cobb, her mother became Brigham Young's second plural wife. They then moved to Utah in 1848. Charlotte, previously a plural wife herself, spoke out against polygamy and gained much opposition from polygamous women suffragists because of it. Her first marriage was to William S. Godbe, the leader of the Godbeite offshoot from the LDS Church. After divorcing Godbe, Kirby married John Kirby, a non-LDS man, and they were together until Charlotte's death in 1908. Charlotte was a leading figure of the Utah Territory Woman Suffrage Association, and served as a correspondent to the government and other suffragist organizations, including the National Women's Suffrage Association. Charlotte often traveled to the East Coast to deliver lectures regarding women's rights and temperance, the first Utah woman and the first woman with voting rights to speak to national suffragist audiences. Charlotte Ives Cobb Kirby died on January 24, 1908, at age 71 in Salt Lake City, Utah.