page_title: Hannah Kempfer
section_title: Early life, education and career
hierarchical_section_title: Hannah Kempfer / Biography / Early life, education and career
caption_attribution_description: English: Johannah Josephine Jensen (Hannah Jensen Kempfer) in Stavanger, Norway (early 1880s).
context_page_description: Hannah Jensen Kempfer was a Minnesota schoolteacher, farmer and politician. She was a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1923 to 1930 and from 1933 to 1942, representing District 50 and Otter Tail County. Kempfer was one of the four women first elected to the Minnesota legislature in 1922 after women's suffrage.
  Born on a ship in the North Sea, Kempfer was adopted by a Norwegian family that immigrated to the United States in 1885. Her family settled in Minnesota and squatted a piece of railroad land where she grew up in poverty. She became a teacher at a small rural schoolhouse.
  As a legislator, she championed the rights of children and fought for the conservation of natural resources. She introduced legislation to protect the Showy Lady's slipper, Minnesota's state flower.
context_section_description: Johannah Josephine was born on December 22, 1880 in the North Sea on a ship sailing under a British flag. Her father was a sailor and her mother an unwed stewardess. Her mother left her in Stavanger, Norway, where she was taken to an orphanage. Ole and Martha Jensen, a shipbuilder and his wife who had recently lost their only child, adopted Johannah in March 1881. The Jensens immigrated to Adams, Minnesota in 1885 where they stayed with relatives.
  In 1889, the Jensens moved to Otter Tail County and, being very poor, squatted a piece of property that belonged to the railroad. When Johannah Josephine was 12, she took the train to Fergus Falls to find work. She was taken in by the family of a milkman. She attended both Fergus Falls High School and Park Region Luther College in Fergus Falls. A teacher shortened her name to Hannah.
  At 17, she tested for her teaching certificate and became a teacher in Friberg Township. She began serving hot lunches there  and her school became known as "Hot Soup School". She taught from 1898 to 1908 and paid off her debts, buying the land her family had been living on. She also worked as a correspondent for the Fergus Falls newspaper Wheelock's Weekly.
  She married Charles Taylor Kempfer, a farmer, on May 23, 1903 and moved to his parents' farm. They never had children of their own, but were foster parents for eleven children that had been orphaned. Kempfer was active in her community, helping to form a farm improvement club and organizing church socials and quilting bees. When a tornado tore through Fergus Falls, she helped organize a relief effort.
caption: Johannah Josephine Jensen in Stavanger, Norway (circa 1883)
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