At the time when Johann van Beethoven married, there was quite a colony of musicians, and other persons in the service of the court, in the Bonngasse, as that street is in part named which extends from the lower extremity of the market-place to the Cologne gate. Chapelmaster van Beethoven had left the house in the Rheingasse and lived at No. 386. In the adjoining house, north, No. 387, lived the musical family Ries. Farther down, the east house on that side of the way before the street assumes the name Kölnerstrasse was the dwelling of the hornist, afterward publisher, Simrock. Nearly opposite the chapelmaster’s the second story of the house No. 515 was occupied (but not till after 1771) by the Salomons; the parterre and first floor by the owner of the house, a lace-maker or dealer in laces, named Clasen. Of the two adjoining houses the one No. 576 was the dwelling of Johann Baum, a master locksmith, doubtless the Jean Courtin, “serrurier,” of the Court Calendar for 1773. In No. 617 was the family Hertel, twelve or fifteen years later living under the Beethovens in the Wenzelgasse, and not far off a family, Poll, perhaps relations of Madame Beethoven the elder. Conrad Poll’s name is found in the Court Calendars of the 1770’s as one of the eight Electoral “Heiducken” (footmen). In 1767 in the rear of the Clasen house, north[12] there was a lodging to let; and there the newly married Beethovens began their humble housekeeping. Their first child was a son, Ludwig Maria, baptized April 2, 1769, whose sponsors, as may be read in the register of St. Remigius parish, were the grandfather Beethoven and Anna Maria Lohe, wife of Jean Courtin, the next-door neighbor. This child lived but six days. In two years the loss of the parents was made up by the birth of him who is the subject of this biography.
[5] In Fétis’ “Biographie universelle” (new ed.) several of these names are misprinted. They are corrected here from Mr. Jacobs’ letter to A. W. T.
[6] Thayer’s account of this period in the life of Beethoven’s grandfather has here been extended from an article by the Chevalier L. de Burbure, published in the “Biographie nationale publiée par l’Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux arts de Belgique.” Tome II. p. 105. (Brussels, 1868.) From this it further appears that two other members of the Antwerp branch of the family were devoted to the fine arts, viz.: Peter van Beethoven, painter, pupil of Abr. Genoel, jr., and Gerhard van Beethoven, sculptor, accepted in the guild of St. Luke about 1713, Director Vollmer, of Brussels, in a communication to Dr. Deiters gave information of a branch of the family in Mechlin and of still another in Brabant where, in the village of Wambeke, there was a curé van Beethoven who must either have died or been transferred between 1729 and 1732.