Maria Sibylla Merian
Maria Sibylla Merian (2 April 164713 January 1717) was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator, a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family. Merian was one of the first naturalists to observe insects directly.
Maria Leach
Born in New York City, Maria Leach was the former Alice-Mary Doane, daughter of Benjamin H. Doane and Mary (Davis) Doane. Her father was a native of Nova Scotia, one of Canada's three Maritime provinces. Born in Barrington, in Shelburne County, he was a descendent of the venerable family called Doane (an Anglicized form of a Gaelic name common in southern Ireland since the 1500s). In Nova Scotia he had connections to seafaring through his own father, a ship's captain. In the late 1870s or early 1880s, Benjamin Doane and his wife Mary, a native of South Carolina and an unreconstructed Rebel, moved to New York and established a home in Manhattan, where they lived for some years and raised their children.