Nellie Nugent Somerville

Eleanor "Nellie" 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.

Eleanor Nugent was born in Greenville, Mississippi, into the state's plantation aristocracy, in the middle of the American Civil War. She was the daughter of William Lewis Nugent and Eleanor Smith Nugent; her great-grandfather was Seth Lewis, second chief justice of the Mississippi Territory and organizer of its judicial system. 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, as did her stepmother, and it was left to her maternal grandmother, S. Myra Cox Smith, to restore the family fortune during Reconstruction. Her father later married a third time. 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. She attended Whitworth Female College, being described there as "too smart for them to teach", before graduating as valedictorian from Virginia's Martha Washington College in 1880 and returning to Greenville, where she tutored the children of a local banker for a time before marrying civil engineer Robert Somerville in 1885. The couple had four children, to whom she remained close. William Nugent invited her to read law in his office, but she declined, claiming instead that she needed to look after her grandmother.

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