Hester Pitt, Countess Of Chatham

Hester Pitt, Countess of Chatham (née Grenville), was born on 8 November 1720 in London. She was the only daughter of Richard Grenville and Hester Grenville, 1st Countess Temple.

On 16 November 1754, she married William Pitt, a Whig politician who later became the Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1766 to 1768. The marriage took place at her residence in Argyle Street, London, and was conducted by Francis Ayscough under a special licence. The union produced five children: Lady Hester Pitt (19 October 1755 – 20 July 1780), who married Viscount Mahon, later the 3rd Earl Stanhope, on 19 December 1774, and was known as a traveler and Arabist; John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham (9 October 1756 – 24 September 1835), who married The Hon. Mary Townshend; Lady Harriet Pitt (18 April 1758 – 1786), who married The Hon. Edward James Eliot in 1785; Hon. William Pitt the Younger (28 May 1759 – 23 January 1806), who served as Prime Minister and remained unmarried; and Hon. James Charles Pitt (1761 – 13 November 1780), a Royal Navy officer who died in Antigua without marrying.

Hester Pitt was granted the title of "Baroness Chatham, of Chatham, in the County of Kent" on 4 December 1761, with a remainder to her sons by William Pitt. Her husband was elevated to the rank of Earl of Chatham in 1766.

Her family connections include her brother, George Grenville, who served as Prime Minister from 1763 to 1765, and her aunt by marriage, Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, a noted Whig politician who had served as her husband's mentor. She and Elizabeth Grenville, her sister-in-law, are distinguished as the only two women in British history to have been both the wife of a prime minister and the mother of another prime minister.

Hester Pitt passed away on 9 April 1803.