Laura J. Eisenhuth

Laura J. Kelly Eisenhuth (later Laura Kelly Alming) (May 29, 1859 – September 30, 1937) was an educator and politician from North Dakota. When she was elected the state's superintendent of public instruction in 1892, she became the first woman in the United States to win an election for state office.

Laura J. Kelly was born in Blenheim, Ontario to Thomas and Nancy (Flater) Kelly. With her parents she moved to DeWitt, Iowa in either 1860 or 1863; there she grew up with four siblings. She attended college and then became a teacher at DeWitt High School in her hometown. She first traveled to the Dakota Territory in June, 1885, filing a pre-emption claim on 160 acres of land near New Rockford. That fall she resumed teaching in Iowa, and returned to her homestead for each of the next two summers. She married, in the fall of 1887, Willis Eisenhuth, a drugstore owner from Carrington. He had come to the territory in 1882; like Laura, he had previously been a teacher in his hometown, Millheim, Pennsylvania. The couple would have no children.

Not long after the couple's marriage and Laura's move to Carrington, she was asked, thanks to her eleven years' experience as an educator, to substitute for the local schoolteacher, who had resigned one month into the school year. She was meant to be a temporary substitute, but ended up serving out the year; at her return the next year she was provided an assistant. In 1889 she was elected superintendent of schools for Foster County, North Dakota, winning reelection the next year. In 1890 she received an appointment as a state institute conductor, overseeing operations for eight teacher institutes in northern North Dakota. That year the Democratic Party endorsed her to run for the position of North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction. Women in the state were only permitted to vote on matters involving schools, and this was the only statewide office for which they could vote; consequently, Eisenhuth reasoned, there was no reason she should not be eligible for the post. She lost, with 45% of the vote, and returned to her institute work, conducting workshops in the southern part of the state.

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