Linhart was born in the Upper Carniolan town of Radovljica, at the time part of the Habsburg Monarchy. His father was a Czech hosiery manufacturer who had moved to Carniola from Bohemia. His step mother was a Carniolan (Slovenian) noblewoman from the family Kappus (also Kapus) von Pichelstein, a prosperous family which had for centuries lived at Kamna Gorica in Upper Carniola, where the family owned an iron foundry and an iron mine since the late Middle Ages, perhaps since the 12th century. Marcus Antonius Kappus von Pichelstein (1657–1717), worked as a Jesuit missionary in Sonora (i.e., the border region between today's United States and Mexico). From there he wrote letters to his friends in Vienna and to his relatives in Carniola In these letters he described discoveries made by research expeditions in Arizona and California and described living conditions, climate etc. Carolus Josephus Kappus von Pichelstein, a nephew of Marcus Antonius, was member of the Academia Operosorum, which was founded in Ljubljana in 1693 after the example of similar academies in Italy. Vladimir Kapus von Pichelstein (1885–1943), a Slovene writer and publisher, was also from the Kapus family.