Nellie Nugent Somerville

Eleanor Nugent Somerville (September 25, 1863 – July 28, 1952) was the first woman elected to the Mississippi Legislature. Her daughter, Lucy Somerville Howorth, was soon elected to that body as well, and the two became the second mother-daughter pair elected to a state legislature in the United States, behind only Helen Timmons Henderson and Helen Ruth Henderson of Virginia.

Life and career Eleanor Nugent was born in Greenville, Mississippi, into the state's plantation aristocracy, in the middle of the American Civil War. Her father was in the Confederate army, and her grandfather was shot by Union Army troops who also burned their house. Her mother also soon died, and it was left to her maternal grandmother, S. Myra Cox Smith, to restore the family fortune during Reconstruction. Nellie was born with a deformed hand, which she would often disguise under a handkerchief or glove; she became adept enough at hiding it that she could even win at croquet one-handed. William Nugent invited her to read law in his office, but she declined, claiming instead that she needed to look after her grandmother. In her later years she moved between Cleveland, Mississippi and Monteagle, Tennessee, where she had purchased a cottage at the Methodist retreat in the 1890s.

Somerville objected to her daughter Lucy's 1928 marriage to Joe Howorth, concerned that she would be giving up on her career, but the two did not become estranged. Lucy went on to win election to the Mississippi House of Representatives in her own right in 1932, but not to her mother's old seat.