Benson, Naomi Achenbach

Naomi Achenbach Benson, a teacher as well as a political and civic activist from Everett, Washington, was a member of the Snohomish County Democratic Party and the Washington State Progressive Party. She worked on behalf of a wide variety of liberal causes in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s: civil liberties and freedom of speech, liberal relief policies, pacifist foreign policies, equal rights for women and minorities, public power, and many others.

Naomi Benson was born Naomi Achenbach on August 19, 1878, and raised on her parents’ farm in Gladbrook, Iowa. She began attending the Iowa State Normal School in Cedar Falls in 1893, then in 1900 enrolled at the State University of Iowa in Iowa City, from which she graduated in 1902. After graduation, she taught one year of seventh grade and three years of high school before moving to Everett, where she taught high school from 1906 to 1908 and 1912 to 1919. She moved back to Iowa in 1919 to help her parents with the farm, and on October 12, 1921, she married Jesse Noble Benson, a highway engineer from her hometown. After their marriage, Jesse Benson worked out of town while his wife continued to help at the Achenbach family farm. The Bensons moved into their own house in 1922 and in the late 1920s moved to Everett permanently.

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