Marie (Mary) Elvora Reinhardt was born in Niederkirche, Bavaria. She moved to America in 1848, part of the mass migration of Germans in that era called the "forty-eighters".

By 1862 she had made her way to Chicago, Illinois where she married Karl Ferdinand “Charles” Leslin, a brewer. The Leslins eventually continued west and by 1871 had found a new home in Wabasha County, Minnesota. In around 1870 Charles partnered with Samual Burkhardt to form a brewery in the small Mississippi River village of Reads Landing. Within 2 years Leslin's sold Burkhardt his stake in the company and formed a brewery of his own a couple miles downriver, a mile north of the town of Wabasha. Charles ran the brewery for two years, then for some reason ownership passed to his wife Mary. She ran it for another decade before selling the brewery to John T. Ginther.

Charles died in 1890 at age 57. Mary died on the 17th of January, 1913 at the age of 80. The company the Leslins founded, renamed the Wabasha Brewery, outlived them both. Prohibition finally shut its doors on January 16th, 1920.

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