Elmira Margaret Baird Vance (1802 – 1878) was an American socialite, farmer, and slave owner. She was the mother of North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance and U.S. Congressman Robert B. Vance.
She was widowed at the age of forty-two and had to auction off some of her husband's property, including eleven slaves.[6] She bought back one slave, Venus, for one dollar.[6] She moved the family, and seven enslaved women and children, to Asheville.[7]
Vance was a member of the Presbyterian church.[5] She was fond of reading, particularly in reading the Bible, as noted in Clement Dowd's 1897 biography Life of Zebulon Vance.[5]
^Dowd, Clement (1897). Life of Zebulon B. Vance. Charleston, South Carolina: Observer Printing and Publishing House. Retrieved April 10, 2022 – via Hathi Trust.
^McKinney, Gordon B. “Zeb Vance and the Construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad.” Appalachian Journal 29, no. 1/2 (2001): 58–67. JSTOR40934142.
