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.