Nancy Fish

Nancy Fish was born in Blackburn, Lancashire on 22 April 1850 to Martha (née Shaw) and John Fish, a Manchester cotton mill owner. John Fish credited his own business success to reading the autobiography of the successful businessman P. T. Barnum. In 1858, her father met Barnum at a lecture at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and thanked him for the inspiration he had provided. The two subsequently became close friends; John Fish named a pair of his engines "Barnum" and "Charity" (after Barnum's wife) and threw a party for General Tom Thumb when he was exhibiting in England; Barnum dedicated a chapter of his autobiography to John Fish. Due to her father's business success, by 1871 Nancy Fish and her family had moved to a large house in the relatively upmarket North Meols, near Southport, Lancashire. Around this time, Fish began writing letters to Barnum. ==Marriage to Barnum==

Fish accompanied Barnum during his European tours and was in constant communication with him through writing. They honeymooned at the Windsor Hotel in New York City. The large size of the legacy displeased Barnum's children. ==Marriage to Callias==

In 1894, Fish visited Egypt where she was presented with a mummy that was being donated to the Scientific Society in Bridgeport. After their wedding ceremony they sailed to Paris and travelled Europe before arriving at Callias's estates on the island of Melita. ==Later life==

After the death of her second husband, Fish moved to Paris where she lived in an apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. In 1898, she married a French nobleman, Lucien Hyppolyte Ferdinand Marie, Baron d'Alexandry d'Orengiani. The marriage was mutually beneficial and business-like, the baron was able to clear his debts with some of Fish's money, and Fish gained the title of baroness and societal connections. As a baroness Fish kept residences in Paris, Aix-les-Bains and Menton. She socialised with American expatriates, French nobility, members of P. T. Barnum's family, and European royals including Empress Eugénie. Her French husband died in 1919, by which point he and Fish were living separately, however this did not stop her from being the lead mourner at his funeral. ==Death==

Fish died in Paris on 23 June 1927, possibly due to complications from a series of strokes she suffered eighteen months earlier. She was cremated and then buried next to her second husband in the English Square of Grand Jas cemetery in Cannes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France. A posthumous biography was published in The New Yorker magazine in April 1936. She was portrayed by Kirsten Bishop in the 1986 television film Barnum, a musical biography of P.T. Barnum. ==References==