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Nancy Witcher (Langhorne) Shaw Astor, Viscountess Astor (1879-1964)
Born in Danville, Nancy Langhorne later lived at Mirador in Albemarle County and in 1901 she married American expatriate millionaire Waldorf Astor and moved to England. In 1919, she was elected to the seat her husband had vacated to move to the House of Lords, becoming the first woman to take a seat in Parliament, where she was Conservative member for Plymouth for twenty-six years. Her causes were temperance, women's and children's welfare, and opposition to socialism. She reveled in the romantic nostalgia that Ellen Glasgow disdained -- at her death in 1964 she had her body wrapped in a Confederate flag before burial at Cliveden, her English home. |