♀Margaretha Hochstrasser

Margaretha Hochstrasser (born about 1554) raised a family in the parish of Horgen in Canton Zürich, Switzerland, in the 1580s. She was possibly the ninth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her son Felix Landis (baptized 1589).

Horgen

She was probably born about 1554; her parents are not known. Hans Landis and Margaretha Hochstrasser were raising a family at Horgen by the 1580s. Their son Hans was baptized there on 31 December 1581 and their son Felix on 1 June 1589, and they also had a daughter, Margaretha, who is said to have died in 1672.

Widow

Her husband preached among the Anabaptists^W of the Horgerberg, and the Zürich council had him arrested, examined and, in September 1614, beheaded with the sword. A letter written by a preacher at Zürich in 1659 recalls that as he was led out to the place of execution his wife and child came to him in tears to say goodbye, and that he asked them to leave so that his resolve would not be shaken.

Five months later Margaretha was in custody herself. Records of the Zürich council from February 1615 are said to show her held in the Spital, the city’s hospital, where she refused to recant, even with her husband’s execution behind her. When she died is not known.

Notes

Birth and name

The birth about 1554 comes from WikiTree, which reckons it from her being “60 years old” in 1614, as quoted from Klaui’s article in the Mennonite Quarterly Review, volume 22 (1948). The Horgen church records, as transcribed on FamilySearch, name her “Margreth Hochstrasser” at the baptism of her son “Felix Landys” on 1 June 1589. The 1581 baptism of Hans names only the father.

Her husband’s first wife

WikiTree says Hans Landis first married Barbara Hochstrasser, the mother of a daughter Margreth baptized at Horgen on 29 May 1580, and married her sister Margaretha before 1582; it marks these records as unsourced. WikiTree lists further children of the second marriage: Rudolph (1583), Heinrich (1585), Verena (1587), Adeli (1588), Jagli (1591), Margreth (1594) and Welti (1597). The daughter Margaretha’s death in 1672 comes from a compiled member tree.

The imprisonment

The Zürich council records of February 1615 are known from Klaui’s 1948 article as WikiTree quotes it. The farewell at the execution comes from D. B. Landis, The Landis Family of Lancaster County (1888), page 10, which quotes the letter of 1659 but does not name the wife.

The line of descent

The 1888 family history names Felix Landis as “son of Hans, beheaded at Zurich, 1614”. The identification of the executed preacher with the father at the Horgen baptisms is a compiled one, made on WikiTree. The descent below Felix also rests on compiled links, as his own page explains, so the whole line stays open.