Nancy Astor

Biography

Nancy Witcher Astor, Viscountess Astor (19 May 1879 – 2 May 1964) was an American-born British politician who was the first woman seated as a Member of Parliament (MP), serving from 1919 to 1945. Astor was born in Danville, Virginia, and raised in Greenwood, Virginia. Her first marriage, to socialite Robert Gould Shaw II, was unhappy and ended in divorce. She then moved to England and married American-born Englishman Waldorf Astor in 1906.

After her second husband succeed to his father's peerage and entered the House of Lords, she entered politics as a member of the Unionist Party (now the Conservative Party) and, at the by-election caused by his elevation, won his former seat of Plymouth S...