Laura Jeannette Eckman (March 29, 1882 – April 7, 1972) was an American historian and author known for her work on the Delaware

Federal Writers' Project The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It ...

. Eckman was born in

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington ( Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina ...

in 1882, the daughter of Aument and Margaret Eckman. She graduated from

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

in 1905. After college she taught German at a local high school until World War I when she started working for

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

. She was appointed assistant secretary to the Republican State Committee in 1920, the first woman with an executive position in the state's Republican party. She worked for Senator T. Coleman du Pont during his two terms in office. From this position she spoke to many women's groups about the importance of getting women out to the polls. Eckman was a charter member of the Delaware Swedish Colonial Society as well as a member of the Archaeological Society of Delaware. She served as vice-chairman of the Delaware branch of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform, and attended the National Conference on Child Labor in 1917 as the Delaware representative.

Writing

Eckman was a self-taught historian who researched Delaware history. In 1938, she received an honorary award from the Queen of the Netherlands for her part in the 300-year anniversary celebration of the Dutch settlement of New Castle, a settlement which she later wrote a book about through her work with the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

. In 1941, she became director of the Delaware

and the

Federal Arts Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...

. While her focus was mostly on writing, she did work with notable Delaware artists including Edward Loper. She edited three editions of the Delaware State Guide (1938, 1947 and 1955) as well as the New Castle Guide (1936, 1937 and 1950). The New Castle guide, called ''New Castle on the Delaware'' was one of the first Federal Writers' Project books, published in 1936 with Eckman as editor. The 1950 edition was heavily edited and expanded by Eckman. She was appointed director and historian of the New Castle Tercentenary Celebration in 1950. She published ''Crane Hook on the Delaware, 1667-1669'' in 1957, describing the years when Crane Hook Church, one of the first churches in the region, served a population from New Castle, Delaware to Tinicum, Pennsylvania. The book ''Delaware: A Guide to the First State'' was the tenth book in the

American Guide Series The American Guide Series includes books and pamphlets published from 1937 to 1941 under the auspices of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), a Depression-era program that was part of the larger Works Progress Administration in the United States. T ...

, being released along with the Swedish-American Delaware Tercentenary Celebration. Eckman edited three versions of that book, along with Anthony Higgins and William H. Conner. In 1963 Eckman edited historical research done by Betty Macdonald as part of her newspaper series and published Historic Landmarks of Delaware and the Eastern Shore; it won first place in the Women's Club of the Year Competition.

Death and legacy

Eckman died in 1972. She was inducted into the Delaware Hall of Fame in 2010. Her papers are held by the

Smithsonian Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

Bibliography

* A Century of Fine Cloth, 1831-1931 (1931) * New Castle on the Delaware (1936) * Delaware, A Guide to the First State (1938) * The Kinkheads of Delaware as Pioneers in Minnesota (1949) * Crane Hook on the Delaware (1957) * Historic Landmarks of Delaware and the Eastern Shore (1963)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eckman, Jeanette 1882 births 1972 deaths American women historians