Luella Knott
Knott House Museum
Luella Knott and her husband, William Knott, purchased the Knott House in downtown Tallahassee in 1928. The house was constructed by enslaved craftspeople in the early 1840s, (possibly by George Proctor, a free black builder) and had several owners before the Knotts acquired it.
Mrs. Knott graduated from college in 1891 and was part of the first generation of college-educated women, though she still held views typical of her time about married women. While she believed that married women should not work for pay unless the husband was injured or disabled, she did approve of women doing volunteer work to improve their community. She accepted that women had “‘intellectual gifts and capabilities, which the world is only just now recognizing.’”
Like many middle and upper middle class women, Mrs. Knott engaged in social reform and she was active in Tallahassee’s temperance movement. She was deeply religious, and though she had some reservations about assuming a public role, she believed that “drinking was the work of the devil” and felt a duty to oppose alcohol consumption. This led to Mrs. Knott helping to organize and lead a Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) temperance parade the day before Leon County voted to go dry in 1904.
Mrs. Knott was a musician, an advocate for social causes, and—as the Knott House clearly demonstrates—a poet. Mrs. Knott adorned the home’s Victorian-era furnishings with her poems that blended history and moral lessons with charm and wit. Stop by "The House That Rhymes" to learn more about Luella Knott’s life and times.
