This page covers information about the Knatz family in Baltimore Maryland and also in District of Columbia and Pennsylvania.
The earliest record of a Knatz in the United States that I have found (other than the records of the Knatz Hessian soldiers who came to the United States to fight on the British side during the U.S. Revolutionary War) was on the first membership list of the Old Otterbein Evangelical United Brethren Church, located at Conway and Sharp Street in Baltimore, Maryland. The Old Otterbein Church was erected in 1785 by Reverend Philip William Otterbein. The Church was established in 1771 as a German Evangelical Reformed Church. Reverent Otterbein who had come from Germany in 1751 was a missionary to German colonists in Pennsylvania. By 1786, Otterbein has a growing interest in the Methodist movement and by the year 1800, Otterbein was part of the founding of the United Brethren and the Old Otterbein Church took on the new denomination (http://www.southbaltimore.com/church/Otterbein/otterbein3.html).
The earliest membership rolls bears the date 1785, the year the church was erected. The list is likely the head of the household, as no female members are listed. On the list is found the name
Jacob Knatz
In 2009, I visited the Old Otterbein Church to examine their records. There are some translated records in the Church office and there are records in the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. While I did not find any records related to Jacob Knatz, I did find two children born to Jacob and Catharina Knab. I thought there might have been a transcription error in the translation because there was no Jacob Knab on the list of Church members that I had. Two members of the Maryland Historical Society checked for me and the name is definitelhh Knabe and not Knatz. They also checked Ed Wright’s book, Record of Old Otterbein and found no Knatz in it. It sort of makes me wonder if the Jacob Knatz record which came from the list of church members on Roots-web is correct.
The 1870 census for Maryland also shows August Knatz, single age 18 living with a John Geiger family. John was a confectioner. I am unsure who this August Knatz is because he is too young to be my immigrant ancestor August Knatz from New York although August did have family connections in Maryland and he also became a baker, a craft he practiced in New York. The 1870 Maryland census also shows a Philip Knatz, age 32 a grocer, living in Baltimore with his wife Christiana, and children Edward, Llily and Philip. Augusts’ mother was Anna E. Lechthaler, born in 1809 and daughter of Anna Elisabeth Krug and Johannes Lechthaler. Anna’s older brother Justus Lechthaler, a baker and grocer, born 1807, was already living in Baltimore when August Knatz emigrated. Justus Lechthaler was August Knatz’s uncle. The 1851 Thomson’s Mercantile and Professional lists “J. Lechthaler” and the address “ 4 Shakspeare” as a baker of loaf bread (as compared with bakers listed for “ship bread and crackers.”
The information seems to indicate a strong relationship between the New York Knatz family and the Baltimore Knatz family. The earliest membership rolls for the Old Otterbein Evangelical United Brethren Church in Baltimore Maryland, dated 1785 lists as a member Jacob Knatz. There are no other records that I have been able to find from Old Otterbein for other Knatz family members and I have not had time to further research Jacob Knatz.
In 2005, I was contacted by Stuart Knatz, who went by the name Brad. He told me that his father was Robert Steuart Knatz, Jr. Brad told me that his father said that his great-grandfather Philip Knatz came to Baltimore from Dresden, Germany in 1856 and operated Philip Knatz Family Grocery. Philp Knatz listed himself as being born in Hesse-Cassel which is the area of Germany where Niedenstein is and where August Knatz was born. Brad’s father passed away on December, 12, 2009 at the age of 80.
In 1870 there were two other Knatz’s living in Baltimore when August was there, a Philip Knatz and a Henry Knatz. Philip Knatz was a grocer and operated a store at 875 West Baltimore Street. Philip was born in Hesse Cassel in 1838. Hesse Cassel is the area of Germany where August Knatz came from. In 1870 Philip was 32 years old, married to Christiana (born 1838 in Germany) and they had six children. For Christmas, 1884, Philip gave his first son Edward G. a watch. The outside of the watch reads E.G. Knatz and inside the message is “from his father Dec 25, ’84”
