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Marktleuthen and the Knolls and Legats

Marktleuthen

Marktleuthen is a town of about 4,000 people in the Fichtelgebirge, the highlands of northeastern Bavaria. It is first recorded in 1314. Fire runs through its history. Great fires struck in 1577; in 1641, during the Thirty Years’ War, when the marketplace, the church, the town hall and 71 houses burned; in 1691; and in 1843, seventeen years after John Knoll was born there. The old town that stands today was built after his time.

The town lies at about 550 meters on the river Eger, below the Schneeberg, where the river rises. Its church of St. Nikolaus has a pulpit of 1617, a coffered ceiling painted in 1718 by Matthes Gebhard and Johann Jacob Radius, and a baptismal angel made at Bayreuth in 1780. A stone bridge built in 1596 and renovated in 1776 crossed the Eger until 1964. In John’s day the town was known for its soot-tub trade. Its stone works and its glass, porcelain and paint factories came only with the Regensburg–Hof railway in the 1880s, a generation after he left.

St. Nikolaus has been a Lutheran parish since 1528. Marktleuthen had no Catholic congregation until 1909 and no Catholic parish of its own until 1929. From 1861 the area’s few Catholics belonged to the distant parish of Marktredwitz.

The Knolls and Legats of Marktleuthen

John E. Knoll was born outside marriage to Barbara Legat, a tailor’s daughter. He grew up as the son of the butcher Johann Georg Knoll, whom she married four years after his birth. Both families had lived in Marktleuthen for at least a generation before him.

Georg Knoll’s father, Christian David Knoll, made cloth and wool (Tuch- und Woll-Fabrikant) in Marktleuthen in 1790 and 1791. By 1798 he was a tailor, and later records call him a cattle dealer and a master tailor, so he possibly changed his trade. His wife, Maria Catharina Baumgärtl, came from Schwarzenbach an der Saale. They probably married outside Marktleuthen, perhaps in her hometown, before their first child was born in March 1790. Four of their children were born in Marktleuthen.

Margaretha Kunigunda’s godmother was the wife of a shoemaker of Schwarzenbach. Johann Georg, the only son, was born at seven in the morning, and his godfather was Johann Georg Pahl [?], a citizen and butcher of Schwarzenbach. Maria Catharina died of consumption on 26 August 1824, aged 62 years, 2 months and 21 days. Christian David probably died on 29 September 1837, when “Daviel Knoll,” a cattle dealer of 71, was found drowned in a meadow. He was buried the next day.

A second Knoll family lived in the town. Christian Knoll, a master butcher and innkeeper and the son of the late Eckardt Knoll, married Eva [?] Barbara Fickentscher of Oberkotzau on 21 February 1790. The two families were possibly related, but no record shows a link.

Georg’s sisters married local tradesmen. Margaretha Kunigunda, probably the girl born in 1791, married Johann Adam Uhl, a journeyman carpenter, on 18 February 1821. Their first daughter, Eva Barbara Henrietta, had been born on 22 May 1820, with Uhl named as the alleged father. Anna Margaretha followed on 7 November 1821, Margaretha Barbara on 18 August 1824 and Johann on 28 July 1827. Eva Barbara, entered as Christian David Knoll’s youngest daughter, married Blasius Schlötzer, a brickmaker and a widower, on 7 December 1824. She was probably the Eva Barbara born in 1795. Their daughters Barbara and Anna Catharina were born on 28 August 1825 and 16 July 1827. On 15 February 1829 she gave birth early to a stillborn son, and she died of a fever the next day, aged 33 years, 5 months and 6 days. Her daughter Barbara died on 7 September 1834, and Blasius Schlötzer on 25 December 1841.

On the mother’s side, Barbara Legat was born at Marktleuthen on 3 November 1804, the daughter of Johann Legat, a citizen and tailor, and Katharina Dorothea Wunderlich of Kirchenlamitz. Her parents were probably the couple who married there on 22 September 1803: Johann Legat, only son of the citizen and householder Heinrich Legat and soon a master tailor, and Katharina Dorothea, eldest daughter of Heinrich Wunderlich of Kirchenlamitz. Heinrich Legat, probably Johann’s father, died at Marktleuthen on 23 March 1811, aged 68. A daughter Elisabeth, born on 5 March 1821 to Johann Legat and “Anna Katharina” Wunderlich, was possibly Barbara’s younger sister.

At four in the morning on 10 June 1826, Barbara Legat, the eldest daughter of the master tailor Johann Legat, gave birth to a son. He was baptized Johann Erhard on 2 July under his mother’s surname, Legat, and no father was named. His sponsors were Johann Erhard [Liab], a journeyman carpenter, and Anna Maria Pöllmann. The margin of the entry gives the family’s house as number 63.

On Palm Sunday, 4 April 1830, after the banns, Barbara married Georg Knoll in the church at Marktleuthen. He was a journeyman butcher and a lodger (Herberger), and the only son of the tailor Christian David Knoll. Ten years later, in 1840, “J. Erhard Knoll,” born on 10 June, the son of the butcher Georg Knoll, was confirmed in the town’s Lutheran church. The Legat baby and the Knoll confirmand were probably the same boy, and he was probably John E. Knoll. John’s own will gives his birth at Marktleuthen on 10 June 1826, and he became a butcher like Georg. His mother was Barbara Legat and his legal father Georg Knoll. His natural father is not named.

Georg and Barbara had four sons of their own, who were probably John’s half-brothers.

By the time the twins were born, Georg was a master butcher. The twins were born in house no. 63, where John had been born, and their sponsor was Johann Legat, the master tailor’s only son. Johann Adam was entered as the fifth child (“5 Kind”), a count that possibly includes Johann Erhard as the first. One of his sponsors, Johann Adam [Uh?], a journeyman carpenter, was possibly his uncle by marriage, Johann Adam Uhl. The twins were confirmed in 1847 and Johann Adam in 1855.

Georg Knoll, butcher, died of old age at house no. 27 on 15 June 1870, aged 71, and was buried on 17 June. Barbara Knoll, a butcher’s widow, died of old age at house no. 150 on 2 March 1884, aged 79. They were probably John’s legal father and his mother.