Siegling, Marie R.

Composer Mary Regina Siegling Shuman-Leclercq (1824-1920) was the oldest daughter of musician and instrument maker Johann Zacharias Siegling, who was born in 1791 in Erfurt, Germany. Siegling immigrated to South Carolina in 1819, where he anglicized his name as "John Siegling" and established one of Charleston's first music stores, the Siegling Music House, a firm that remained in business until the 1970s. In 1844, Mary Regina accompanied her father to Havana, Cuba, where his firm had established a music store under the name Siegling & Vallotte. During their three-month sojourn, she performed under the name "Charleston's Jenny Lind." Later that year, she traveled to Paris to study music. While touring Europe, she met music professor Edward Schuman-Leclercq and married him in Charleston, S.C., in 1850. Throughout this period, she published music under the name Marie Regina Siegling but stopped composing after her marriage; the couple then returned to Paris where they had five children and worked with composers such as: Devrient, Liszt, Schroeder, Schumann, and Wagner.