Marie Siegling

She was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest daughter of Prussian immigrant Johann Zacharias Siegling and his wife Mary Schnierle.

While on tour in Europe, she met literature professor Eduard Schuman LeClercq, whom she married in 1850.

She writes in her memoir: "I met many distinguished artists and authors, amongst them Wagner, Schröder-Devrient, Liszt, Schumann.

Here also I was present at the first representation of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, directed by the great Master Richard Wagner, who took the baton."

Her youngest brother was Rudolph Septimus Siegling a Confederate officer and later a prominent lawyer in Charleston.