♀Adelheid Egli

Adelheid Egli (born about 1593) was, with her husband Felix Landis, a member of the Anabaptist^W church of the Horgerberg, in Canton Zürich, Switzerland. She was possibly the eighth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her son Hans Landis, baptized in 1630.

Marriage

She was probably born about 1593 at Fischenthal, in Canton Zürich; her parents are not known. She is said to have been the third wife of Felix Landis, who had been widowed twice in 1629.

Felix Landis and Adelheid Egli were married by November 1630, when their son Hans was baptized at Hirzel on 21 November. A household list of Hirzel from 1633 is said to show the couple with Hans and a younger daughter, Maria.

Oetenbach

For his faith Felix was committed to Oetenbach^W, a former nunnery in Zürich that was then a prison. According to the Martyrs Mirror^W, as quoted in a Landis family history of 1888, he was treated there with shameful rigor and often given no food, until long fasting had so damaged his stomach that it could no longer keep food down, and he prepared himself for death. In that state his persecutors carried him into church during the sermon and threw him under a bench, where he died at once. He is said to have died about 1642.

Adelheid was also held at Oetenbach, for nearly four years, and treated without mercy and with indignity: she was put in irons and for a time had her clothes taken from her every night. She escaped from the prison. Meanwhile the authorities broke up the family, sent the children away among strangers, and seized the house and furniture, which they sold for 5,000 florins. Where and when she died is not known.

Notes

Her name and age

The Hirzel church records, as transcribed on FamilySearch, name her “Adelheit Eglin” at the baptism of her son Hans on 21 November 1630; WikiTree gives 22 November. D. B. Landis, The Landis Family of Lancaster County (1888), quoting the Martyrs Mirror, calls her “Adelheyd Egli”. Her age of 40 comes from the 1633 household list of Hirzel as WikiTree quotes it, and Fischenthal as her birthplace from her WikiTree profile. That she was Felix’s third wife, after Margaretha Strehler and Magdalena Haas, is from WikiTree, which takes it from an ancestor list compiled by Syz-Hegetschweiler.

The prison account

The account of Felix and Adelheid at Oetenbach comes from the 1888 Landis family history, pages 10 and 11, which quotes the Martyrs Mirror; WikiTree cites the same book at page 1120. The 1888 book gives no year for Felix’s death, and the date of about 1642 comes from WikiTree. Neither says when Adelheid escaped.

Her death

WikiTree gives her death as 1647, and the ancestor list as about 1661 or after 1644. No record of her death is known.

The line to Pennsylvania

The descent from Adelheid rests on compiled links. The Pennsylvania settler Felix Landis is identified with the Felix baptized at Hirzel on 8 June 1673, a son of Hans Landis and Maria Huber, only by compiled genealogies. A Felix Landiss, son of Hans, was buried at Wetzikon on 21 June 1697, with no age given, and he could be that same child. The link from Barbara Landis (1739–1812) to her father is also only possible, so the whole line stays open.