Obituary: Natalie, Lady Douglas-Hamilton CBE, campaigner Born: 6 August, 1909, in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Died: 14 January, 2013, in Andover, New Jersey, aged 103 NATALIE Wales was a "daughter of the American Revolution" - a descendant of the first 17th-century British settlers who went on to fight for independence from the colonial power. She became a Manhattan socialite, a stunningly beautiful and intelligent magnet for magazines such as Vogue and The New Yorker, and later a Second World War charity hero on behalf of Britain long before the US became militarily involved. She went on to marry Scottish politician, nobleman and RAF Wing-Commander Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton in 1953 and dedicated the rest of her life largely to all things Scottish, her husband having been a Unionist (Conservative) MP for Inverness in the early 1950s. Together, in 1956, having settled in the US, Lord and Lady Douglas-Hamilton founded the New York-based American-Scottish Foundation, with the Latin motto Semper Scotia (Scotland Forever), a non-profit organisation dedicated to bringing the US and Scotland, particularly the millions of Americans of Scottish extraction, together. After her husband and his 21-year-old son died when his own small plane crashed in Cameroon in 1964, she continued to run the foundation herself and remained its President Emerita until her death this week at the remarkable age of 103. She had been given an honorary CBE for her support for our war effort before her fellow "Yanks" put boots on European soil. Soon after marrying Lord Malcolm, she also helped him organise and finance the Highland Fund for social development, aimed at reversing the decay of the Highlands, which provided loans to crofters, fishermen and small businesses for more than half a century. When the fund folded in 2010, Highland MSP Jamie Stone, whose family once got a loan to set up a cheese-making business, told The Scotsman: "I remember my parents being extraordinarily grateful for the help they got from the fund. Fifty years later, the business is still going with a workforce of ten and that's in no small measure due to that loan. The fact that Lord Douglas-Hamilton was her fourth husband was, as her grandson Audley Burnett pointed out to The Scotsman, "not the sign of a desperate housewife but of an independent and emancipated woman who spent the latter half of her life in fierce devotion not only to her own native land, the United States, but to its relations with her beloved Scots people." After her husband's death, she fulfilled his dream of creating Scotland House in New York City and organising the high-profile American-Scottish Ball at the Plaza Hotel, as well as "Scotland Week" and later Tartan Day, with its colourful parade, supported by clan chiefs including those of Argyll, Atholl and Elgin. She persuaded shops and businesses on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue to put Scottish flags or motifs in their windows and on lampposts, and organised pipe bands and other Scottish music and art exhibitions. Scotland House, her husband's dream, first opened in the mid-1970s on East 39th Street, a place for Scots, American Scots or simply lovers of Scotland to gather for its library, movies, seminars, lectures, dances, dinners or ceilidhs. Sales of Scottish products - sweaters, tweeds, china or jewellery - helped to pay the bills. The House later moved to 575 Madison Avenue. She had persuaded British Caledonian to fly guests from Scotland to New York for the American-Scottish Ball but when the airline faced industrial disputes, she phoned an old friend - reclusive businessman and aviator Howard Hughes. She was one of a handful of people on earth to whom he had entrusted his number. "Howard, I need a plane," she told him. He obliged. Natalie Scarritt Wales was born in the small town of Cohasset, Massachusetts on 6 August, 1909 to Major Nathaniel B Wales and his wife Enid Scarritt, daughter of an Episcopalian church minister and great granddaughter of Lady Susan Symington of Edinburgh. Major Wales, an engineer, was credited with inventing the Kelvinator, one of the earliest electric refrigerators. Both her parents were descendants of the earliest British settlers to New England in the early 17th century, including Nathaniel Wales, who came ashore at Braintree, Massachusetts on board his ship the James in 1628. Natalie and her younger brother Nathaniel Jr were brought up both in Boston and Manhattan. Her parents divorced when she was 13, adding to her natural tendency towards an independent spirit; she was described as "a generous, outgoing and enthusiastic person of drive and great optimism." By her late teens, she appeared in the society and gossip columns of such publications as the The New York Times and the New Yorker, indeed often on the front pages. She spent much of her life on Manhattan's Upper East Side, overlooking Central Park, where she kept photos of her mother as a young girl in pearls, silks and lace, in the arms of a large, beaming black servant, "Old Joe," himself in bespoke suit and tie. "No tea after 4pm, because it interfered with sleep, and Bourbon at 6," her grandson Audley recalled. She was 30 when she learned of the hardships in Britain during the early months of the Second World War, long before the US got involved in the conflict. She took a train to Washington DC to ask the British ambassador, Lord Lothian, if there was anything American citizens could supply to aid the war effort. After being put in touch with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, she received an answer: balaclava hats for Merchant Navy seamen freezing while shepherding allied convoys across the Atlantic. Natalie set up what she called "Bundles for Britain," persuaded American wool mills to help, and set up a headquarters in New York City which became overwhelmed with women handing in clothing or offering to knit all sorts of clothes. Soon she had several million helpers, and branches around the US, sending goods not only for service personnel but for civilian victims of the Luftwaffe bombings of London, Coventry, Clydeside and elsewhere. After the war, in 1947, as Soviets posed a new threat in Europe, she founded, along with her then husband Edward Paine, what they called Common Cause Inc, described as "the first American citizens" organisation to combat communism" and which helped airlift food and other supplies to besieged West Berliners. It was after her husband died suddenly in 1951 that she met Lord Douglas-Hamilton, son of the 13th Duke of Hamilton, a former Second World War Mosquito fighter pilot and RAF boxing champion, when she made an anti-communist speech in the House of Commons. Both ardent anti-communists, they hit it off. He was married to Pamela Bowes Lyon, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, but got divorced to marry Natalie in 1953. After spending time in London and Scotland, and setting up the Highland Fund, the couple settled in the US in the mid-1950s. Natalie treasured a note her husband wrote shortly before his plane crash death: "Scotland will always mean home to me. The eternal spiritual ownership of Scotland's wild freedom, her incredible beauty and the enveloping warmth of the land and of its people... are of a value greater than gold. A devout Christian, Lady Douglas-Hamilton retired to Stillwater, New Jersey, until moving to a care home in nearby Andover, where she died. Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton was her fourth husband, she having previously had the married names Paine, Winslow and Latham. She is survived by her daughter Mimi Mead in New York, six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Her other daughter, "Bubbles" - better known as the author Natalie Wales Winslow and wife of Lt-Col George P Burnett of the Scots Guards, died in 1988.