The Rev. Nancy Webb Stroud

Nancy Webb Stroud was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and spent her early childhood living on the family horse farm near Knauertown in Chester County. For six years, she lived with her parents and brothers in Reno, Nevada before moving back to the Main Line, where she graduated from Radnor High School. As a senior at Radnor, she visited the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church to attend a symposium on the controversial topic of the ordination of women, and to wonder what it would be like to study there.

Nancy took a bachelor's degree in English and Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 1979. She was a teacher and administrator at Montgomery School when its campus was in Wynnewood, serving as Third Grade Teacher and Director of the Lower School.

Nancy met her husband, William D. Stroud II, while singing with the Savoy Company of Philadelphia, an amateur Gilbert and Sullivan performance group. She and Bill are the happy and somewhat harried parents of Julia, a student at Barnard College/Columbia University, Will, a student at Duquesne University and Ed, a student at Conestoga High School.

Shortly after the birth of Julia, Nancy left teaching to become a full-time mother at home. When Edward entered first grade, she added part-time seminary studies to her full time employment, and shortly after that, she added a part-time job at St. Peter's in the Great Valley to her duties. She also wrote an occasional essay for publication. She completed two-thirds of her seminary education at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, and then, thirty years after that first visit, transferred to General Seminary. She received a Master of Divinity in 2005.

Ordained deacon in June 2005, she was called to serve as Interim Assistant Minister at St. Paul's in Chestnut Hill, and became Mother Nancy on December 17, 2005 at her ordination to the priesthood. St. Peter's in the Great Valley is one of seven churches in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and nine in the national Episcopal Church where Mother Nancy has been blessed to participate in ministry in her lifetime.

She loves preaching and teaching, but wants to learn and grow in all aspects of parish ministry. Mother Nancy is delighted to be Associate Rector at St. Peter's in the Great Valley and to join with the whole community in serving our Lord.