North Dakota
North Dakota has three meritorious claims to fame: in 1892, it was the first state to elect a woman to statewide office; in 1933, it was the first to have a woman as Speaker of the House; and one of its female legislators holds the record for re-election.
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| Brynhild Haugland North Dakota State Government. |
Laura Eisenhuth (1858-1937)
North Dakota granted women the right to vote in school elections – but no other ones – when it became a state in 1890. Most western states elected their chief education officer, with the most common job title being “superintendent of public schools” -- but even though most teachers were women, only men had been elected. When North Dakota women got the vote for school elections, they planned a successful campaign for a woman to hold this position, and voters elected Democrat Laura Eisenhuth in 1892.
Other western states – but not eastern ones – immediately emulated this: in 1894, Colorado elected Antoinette Peavey; Wyoming chose Estelle Reel in 1896, etc. By 1920, when most women got the vote with the 19th Amendment, dozens of women had followed in Eisenhuth’s footsteps and won statewide elections for this post. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women had been elected to local school boards.
Minnie C. Craig (1883-1965)
Born in Phillips, Maine, Minnie Davenport attended the elite New England Conservatory of Music, but like so many educated women of her day, became a teacher. She moved to North Dakota in 1908, after marrying Edward Craig; he was president of a bank in the small town of Esmond, in rural Benson County, close to the Canadian border.
The town was bigger then, as North Dakota dramatically lost population because of drought and economic depression. Farmers revolted against the conditions that caused the Great Depression earlier than did urbanities, and North Dakota led other states in forming alternatives to the major parties. The Craigs became active in the new Nonpartisan League, which rejected both the Republican and Democratic parties to focus on cooperative grain marketing, publicly owned utilities, and other forms of socialism.
When North Dakota women became eligible to run for legislative office with the federal 19th Amendment in 1920, Minnie Craig successfully ran for the state House in 1922. Her rural constituents re-elected her to a total of six terms, and her colleagues so respected her intelligence and ability that they elected her Speaker in 1933. Having achieved that milestone, she did not run in 1934 and instead became the area administrator for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. This was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to salvage the Midwestern economy from both drought and the Great Depression. Craig later used her executive abilities to run two rural banks, as well as serve as chief clerk of the North Dakota House.
She died at age 92 in her birth-state of Maine.
Brynhild Haugland (1905-1998)
Nominated by NFWL
Brynhild Haugland was born on July 28, 1905 in Minot, North Dakota. Haugland was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants and began attending public school in Minot in 1913, finishing in 1924, after which she taught in Minot until 1925. In 1928, she got her teaching certificate at Minot State Normal School. For her work in education she won an award in the Public Service category of the Council of Advancement and Support of Education.
As the longest serving state legislator in the U.S., Brynhild Haugland served 26 terms (52 years) as a Republican Representative in the North Dakota Legislature beginning in 1938 and ending in 1990. During her time in office, Haugland focused on “education, economic and industrial development,” the “agricultural and dairy industry, transportation, environmental concerns, clean air, State Prison Farm, handicapped accessibility, state parks, and tourism,” among other things. Through her legislative work, Haugland also assisted her home city of Minot when she aided Minot State University in acquiring ten new buildings.
Haugland also worked to improve “farmer’s problems and living conditions,” and created legislation in the 1940s on a “medical care program that other states have modeled.” For her commitment to aiding farmers, she was recognized by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt when she said “Go down the list of laws passed by the North Dakota legislature in the last 15 years to help meet the farmer’s problems and improve his living conditions, and you will find that Brynhild Haugland had a hand in every one of them." On March 20, 1995, North Dakota recognized Brynhild Haugland’s time of public service by awarding her the state’s highest honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Roughrider Award.
Haugland retired in 1990 after being named Minot’s woman of the year in 1956, 1971, and 1989. Haugland cast a remarkable 22,000 votes during her time in office. She died in Minot, Missouri, in 1998. Haugland is most remembered by her quote, “Most any good thing can be accomplished eventually if you are not particular who gets the credit.”
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