Women's suffrage in Utah was first granted in 1870, in the pre-federal period, decades before statehood. Among all U.S. states, only Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

 granted suffrage to women

Women's suffrage

Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...

 earlier than Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

. However, in 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Act

Edmunds-Tucker Act

The Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887 was passed in response to the dispute between the United States Congress and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regarding polygamy. The act is found in US Code Title 48 & 1461, full text as 24 Stat. 635, with this annotation to be interpreted as Volume...

 was passed by Congress in an effort to curtail Mormon influence in the territorial government, disallowing the franchise of the majority of residents of the state.

Repeal by the Edmunds-Tucker Act

One of the provisions of the Edmunds-Tucker Act was the repeal of women's suffrage; full suffrage was not returned until Utah was admitted to the Union in 1896. The opposition of the majority of Utahns to this act was secured by a provision that required a test oath against polygamy. This was broad enough to include the majority of Mormons who were not directly involved in polygamy. All who would not swear this test oath were ineligible to vote, serve on juries, or hold most other government offices. In addition, the Justice Department sent west a host of federal marshals to investigate the private lives of church members. These were unable to identify individuals properly due to the blanket nature of the oath.

Impact on Mormon polygamy

The town of Beaver City

Beaver, Utah

Beaver is a city in Beaver County, Utah, United States. The population was 2,454 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Beaver County.Settled by Mormon pioneers in 1856, Beaver was one of a string of Mormon settlements extending the length of Utah...

 was the seat of the federal court and the marshals involved in the holding of women and children there. For this reason Wilford Woodruff

Wilford Woodruff

Wilford Woodruff, Sr. was the fourth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1889 until his death...

 put before a General Conference of the LDS Church a limited Manifesto renouncing future polygamous marriages solemnized by the Church.

During the most of the second half of the 19th century federal Laws which deemed each incident of overnight cohabitation a separate felony. Such laws had a chilling effect on the lives of women and children throughout the late 19th century, many of those impacted relocated to other territories or across the border to Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 or Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.