Maria Martin Bachman of Charleston, South Carolina, may well
have been the most influential woman on the American nineteenth
century natural history horizon. Her life changed forever on
October 16, 1831, the day John James Audubon joined the family
of her brother-in-law and future husband, John Bachman, at their
residence on Rutledge Avenue. The 35 year old spinster could not
have foreseen that Audubon would awaken in her a talent as a
painter she did not know she possessed. Her paintings and
watercolor drawings of birds, flowers and insects would later
appear in the second and fourth volumes of the Elephant Folio of
Audubon's The Birds of America. Of the 435 pictures in this
great work, more than fifty contain drawings of insects as well
as birds.