Charlotte le Pelletier

Elizabeth Charlotte Taillevis de Perrigny le Pelletier (1778–) was a French-born musician, composer, and music teacher. She is thought to be the first female composer in Maryland. Life Charlotte le Pelletier was born on 1778 in Perrigny, France, the youngest of eight children of Charles Léon de Taillevis (1730–95), Marquis of Perrigny, and Anne Marie Madeleine de La Tuste (1739–93). Both of her parents died during the Reign of Terror. In 1797 she married Victor Le Pelletier. They had a son, also named Victor. In 1801 the couple sailed to Saint-Domingue, where the Perrigny family owned slave plantations. The Haitian Revolution had already begun, and her husband was killed at Torbeck in 1803 while serving in the French National Guard. Like thousands of other French people there, Charlotte le Pelleteir fled to the United States. She settled in the French Town neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland and opened a studio with her brother, the Abbé George Taillevis de Perrigny. (A Catholic priest, George de Perrigny also served as chaplain to Charles Carroll of Carrollton and was the second librarian of the Library Company of Baltimore. ) She taught music and performed concerts. Sometime in o