Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1 August 1846 – 7 September 1916) was a British-American lecturer, newspaper publisher and correspondent, women's rights activist, and suffragist leader. Born in England, she immigrated to the US, where she attended university and married the former American Civil War general, later Assistant United States Attorney General, Leonard Wright Colby. In 1883, she founded The Woman's Tribune in Beatrice, Nebraska, moving it three years later to Washington, D.C.; it became the country's leading women's suffrage publication. She was an advocate of peace and took part in the great peace conference at San Francisco during the exposition. She also spoke on behalf of the soldiers of the Spanish War. During the Spanish–American War (1898), she was officially appointed as war correspondent, the first woman to be so recognized. In addition to being a suffragist and newspaper publisher, Colby was a lecturer, an interpreter of Walt Whitman, and a writer. She was a delegate to the International Congress of Women (London, England, 1899); delegated by the governor to represent Oregon in the First International Moral Education Congress (London, 1908); and a delegate to the First International Peace Congress (London, 1911). She served as Vice-president of the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, from its formation, 1881–1883; and president, 1883–1909. She was corresponding secretary of the Federal Suffrage Association of the United States. Colby wrote magazine articles for Arena, Harper's Bazaar, Overland, Englishwoman, and others. She was a newspaper correspondent for the International Peace Union, Woman's National Press Association, Oregon Woman's Press Association, Higher Thought Center (London), Woman's Freedom League, National Political Reform League, and International Woman's Franchise Club (London). She often appeared before state legislatures and congressional committees on behalf of woman suffrage; she also aided woman suffrage in England. Family, education and intellectual development Colby was born in Gloucester, England in 1846, the daughter of Thomas and Clara Willingham (Chilton) Bewick. The family settled near Windsor, Wisconsin when Colby was eight. Being part of a large family, she had few opportunities for attending the district school, but her father encouraged and assisted his children to study in the winter evenings, and in this way she prepared herself to teach in country schools. Colby's grandfather, Thomas Bewick, was a notable naturalist and engraver. At the age of nineteen, Colby went to Madison, Wisconsin to live with her grandparents, Stephen Chilton and Clara Medhurst Willingham Chilton. Here she entered the University