Mary E. Woolley Chamberlain
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.[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.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.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.