Laura Kelly married William Eisenhuth in Pennsylvania, later moving west to North Dakota to pursue education and politics.
On June 9, 1883, Laura Kelly married William Eisenhuth in Pennsylvania. This marriage marked a turning point in her life, as the couple subsequently relocated westward, eventually settling in what was then Dakota Territory (soon to become the state of North Dakota upon admission to the Union in 1889).
The move west placed Laura Eisenhuth amid a rapidly developing frontier society where new institutions—schools, courts, and governments—were being built from the ground up. This environment, less bound by entrenched Eastern traditions, would prove unusually receptive to women taking on public roles, including in education and eventually elected office.
It was in North Dakota that Eisenhuth began building her career as an educator and school administrator, laying the groundwork for her later, historic run for statewide office. Her married name, Eisenhuth, is the name under which she would make history less than a decade later. The marriage itself reflects the common pattern of the era whereby a woman's married name became permanently attached to her public legacy, even though she would later remarry and be known as Laura Kelly Alming in her final decades.