Sakakawea

The woman who graces a U.S. dollar coin and is commemorated with a statue on the North Dakota capitol grounds, is probably the woman who first comes to mind when many people think of a notable North Dakota woman.

Sakakawea was a Lemhi Shoshone woman who served as an interpreter to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. She traveled thousands of miles from her home in North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, carrying her baby on her back.

According to various biographies, Sakakawea was a Shoshone who was kidnapped following a battle by a group of Hidatsa. She was taken to a Hidatsa village near Washburn and eventually sold into marriage to French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. She was pregnant when the Corps of Discovery spent the winter near Washburn during the winter of 1803-1804. The expedition hired Charbonneau as an interpreter because Sakakawea spoke Shoshone. Her presence probably helped ease the way of the travelers, since the people they encountered were more at ease when they saw that a woman accompanied the male members of the expedition.

Andrea Johnson/MDN A statute of Sakakawea, one of North Dakota’s notable women, is seen on the capitol grounds in Bismarck.

Sakakawea probably died in 1812, soon after the birth of a daughter. Her children were placed under the guardianship of William Clark.

But her legend lives on in story, song and art. She has been described as a symbol of women’s worth and independence.

Laura Eisenhuth

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., one of the state’s most notable women, said this week that she was inspired and encouraged by some of the successful North Dakota women who preceded her in office. In the early days of statehood, Heitkamp noted, women could vote in school elections but not for president or for other offices.

Educator Laura J. Kelly Eisenhuth saw no reason why a woman would not be eligible to run for the office of state superintendent when women in the state could vote for one.

Andrea Johnson/MDN The vote for women was an issue of importance for women in North Dakota, as elsewhere in the country. In the early 1890s, North Dakota women could vote in school-related elections but not in other elections.

According to her biography at Wikipedia, which was based on news articles and other biographies, Eisenhuth first ran for the office in 1890, but lost. Two years later, the veteran teacher received the Democratic Party’s endorsement for the office and made a successful bid for superintendent of public instruction. She served from 1893 to 1894 and, while in office, advocated installing bathtubs in schools in towns that had water systems and teaching fencing on school grounds.

Eisenhuth was the first woman in the United States to be elected to a statewide office, but she was soon followed by other women, including Emma Bates, the Republican candidate who defeated her in the 1894 race for superintendent of public instruction.

According to her biography at Wikipedia.com, Eisenhuth was adventurous in other ways as well.

She taught in Iowa but came to the Dakota Territory in 1885 at age 26 to file a pre-emption claim on 160 acres of land near New Rockford. She spent summers on the homestead, proving her claim, and returned to Iowa in the fall to teach. Heitkamp first ran for office in North Dakota in the mid-1980s, some 90 years after North Dakotan Laura J. Kelly Eisenhuth became the first woman in the United States to be elected to state office.

In 1887, she married Willis Eisenhuth, who owned a drugstore in Carrington and had previously been a teacher in Pennsylvania. Soon after her marriage, Eisenhuth was asked to fill in for a teacher who had left early in the school year. In 1889, she was elected superintendent of schools for Foster County. In 1890, she was appointed as a state institute conductor and was responsible for overseeing the operations of eight teacher institutes in the northern part of the state.

After her stint in state office, she ran for election again in 1894, 1896 and 1900, but lost all of the races. She later served as an assistant principal at Carrington High School. Her first husband died in 1902 and she remarried Ludwig Alming in 1907 and moved to Jacksonville, Oregon, in 1909. She and her second husband operated a fruit farm. She died in 1937.

Dr. Fannie Almara Dunn Quain

Another early North Dakota pioneer was Dr. Fannie Almara Quain, who was co-founder of the North Dakota Tuberculosis Association and was the first woman from North Dakota to earn a medical degree.

According to her biography at https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography–351.html, Quain had originally planned on becoming a teacher, like many other women in North Dakota during that time period. But she came from a family of doctors and was interested in entering the field herself. There was no money in her family to send her to medical school, so she paid her way through teaching, a bookkeeping job and organizing a concert tour. She eventually attended the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor and graduated in 1898 at the age of 24. She completed an internship in Minneapolis and later worked as a doctor for several years. She traveled long distances across the state in brutally cold weather to reach her patients.

She married Dr. Eric Peer Quain, a surgeon who worked at St. Alexius Hospital, and later had two children. After she stopped practicing as a doctor, she worked to help eradicate tuberculosis in the state.

The North Dakota Tuberculosis Association is now the American Lung Association of North Dakota.

Medora von Hoffman, Marquise de Mores

Anyone who has attended the Medora Musical in western North Dakota or toured the Chateau in Medora has also wondered about the town’s elegant namesake and her French nobleman husband, the Marquis de Mores.

According to the North Dakota Historical Society biography at http://history.nd.gov/historicsites/chateau/chateauLesson/medora.html, the former Medora von Hoffman was the daughter of a wealthy New York banker and his wife, who came from a prominent Louisiana family. She married Antoine-Amedee-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Mores et de Montemaggiore, and had three children. The Marquis ran a failed meat packing plant in Medora and built a 26-room ranch house as a summer retreat for his heiress wife. The house, known as the Chateau, has been restored. The Marquise de Mores is a symbol of elegance and history for those who tour her former home.

After the Marquis de Mores was assassinated in 1896, his wife lived out her life in France. She turned her home into a nursing facility for wounded soldiers during World War I.

Era Bell Thompson

Author, journalist and “Ebony” co-managing editor Era Bell Thompson grew up in Driscoll, N.D., where she and her family were the only blacks in the small town.

According to her biography at Wikipedia, her feelings of isolation drove Thompson to excellence in athletics and academics. After two years at the University of North Dakota, she was forced to leave school because of an illness. She moved to Chicago and eventually landed a magazine job. She was forced to return home to North Dakota to care for her family and worked for a local minister. Eventually, with support of the minister’s family, she returned to college and earned a bachelor of arts and pursued postgraduate work in journalism. She received a fellowship from the Newberry Library and wrote her autobiography, “American Daughter.” In 1947, she joined “Ebony” as an associate editor and was later promoted to co-managing editor. She stayed with the magazine for more than 40 years. She toured 18 countries in Africa and wrote her second book, “Africa, Land of my Fathers” in 1953.

UND named a multicultural center after her.

Thompson, who died in 1986 at age 81, is also a recipient of the state’s highest honor, the Roughrider Award.

Brynhild Haugland

Another notable female legislator from North Dakota was Brynhild Haugland, a Republican who was one of the first female legislators in North Dakota and – with an impressive 52 year tenure in the State House – became the longest serving state legislator in the United States.

Heitkamp fondly remembers Haugland, who was “always so quietly supportive” when Heitkamp testified before legislative committees and offered words of advice to the young lawyer.

Haugland, who was born in near Minot in 1905, first ran for the House in 1936 but lost because an injury kept her from campaigning. She ran again for office in 1938 and never again lost an election for the seat. She retired in 1990, at age 85.

During her time in the Legislature, Haugland focused largely on bills that improved conditions for farmers and on education. She was credited with helping Minot State University obtain funding for 10 buildings.

Haugland, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants, died in 1998 at the age of 95.

Heidi Heitkamp

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D. is the first female U.S. Senator elected from North Dakota.

Prior to that, Heitkamp had served as 28th North Dakota Attorney General from 1993 to 2001 and as the State Tax Commissioner from 1989 to 1993.

Heitkamp recalled last week that she first thought about running for office in 1984, when she was 28 and was trying to recruit women from the state to run for statewide offices.

She had no intention of running herself, but someone told her, “if you think it’s such a good idea, you do it.”

Heitkamp said the 1980s and the 1990s was an era when more women were running for office and getting elected. Heitkamp followed or joined other women who had been elected, including Haugland and the first female lieutenant governor, Ruth Meiers. Sarah Vogel was elected as the state’s agriculture commissioner in 1989.

Heitkamp said women brought different voices to government and highlighted the importance of issues such as domestic violence, education and affordable daycare.

She has been inspired by strong women like her own mother and grandmother, as well as by the female politicians who preceded her and who work alongside her.

While some people might dismiss these as women’s issues, they are really issues that affect both men and women. Heitkamp said economic development is dependent on the availability of safe communities, good schools, affordable housing and daycare. Both men and women benefit when women earn a good living.

Heitkamp said she has been able to reach across the aisle to work with Republican women in Congress to co-sponsor bills on issues that matter to people in their states.

Several members of the bipartisan 25-member Common Sense Coalition that helped negotiate the end to last month’s government shutdown were women, said Heitkamp.

Heitkamp said politics today is a “rough and tumble business, a contact sport.”

“I would say, ‘Leather up,” she would advise any woman planning to run for office in today’s environment.

That might not be the case later if more women run for office and win, but right now it is still a tough business.

Heitkamp has heard too many prospective candidates say they want to be elected to office to “give back” but no one knows what that means, she said. Heitkamp said women who run for office need to “stay true to who they are” and know what they want to do with the job if they are elected.