Nancy Astor, born Nancy Witcher Langhorne in the city of Haverford, Pennsylvania, on April 25, 1878, was one of America's most powerful women of the 20th century. She was admitted to the United States Naval Academy in 1894 and graduated second in her class four years later. She married John Jacob Astor IV in 1900. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1906
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Astor briefly attended Vassar College until she moved with her children to London in 1907. Her first marriage was to William Waldorf Astor II (1864-1906), but the couple divorced after their son died of typhoid fever at age 6. After her divorce, Astor served as a hostess for Edward VII of England at the American Embassy in London for three years.
In 1914, she married Claude Brudenell-Bruce Earl of Ellesmere (1870-1929). They had no children and never lived together; instead, they held joint custody of her son Horace (1905-1917) and daughter Nancy (1910-1940). By 1916, Astor was living with her third husband, her former secretary Walter Joseph Montague Browne (1885-1924), who had been her lover since she was nineteen.
In 1919, they settled permanently in Paris and became naturalized French citizens in 1924. In 1922, she married millionaire Robert Clive Bayliss Guinness (1878-1955) after he divorced his wife Kate Bayliss Guinness in a scandalous divorce action in which it was claimed that Kate had been having an affair with a married man in Egypt. The couple's only child was Noel ("Nobby"), born March 30, 1927.
