Absztrakt

This paper discusses the marriage and inheritance patterns of Szőlősardó (Torna county), a protestant Hungarian village in the hilly countryside region of north eastern Hungary on the basis of parish registers (births from 1726, marriages from 1764, mortality form 1772), tax registers (1715, 1720, 1828), urbariums (i.e. tax-conscriptions of the landlords regarding their taxpayer peasantry, 1593, 1711, 1771), population censuses (1850, 1857, 1869), land register of partition and consolidation (1869–1871) and other nominal sources. Th e study analyses the spatial aspects of contemporary social processes by the identifi cation of economic space, and the domiciles of families and clans. Between 1771–1890 the marriage practices of Szőlősardó fundamentally corresponds with the early and general marriage pattern that is characteristic of our region. In the protestant villein population, women got married at the average age of 21, and by the age 25 the majority of women was married at least once. From the 1780s on, the age for fi rst marriage for men was typically 23 years, but increased to 25 promptly after the enfranchisement of serfs. Before the 1880s the there is a discernible secondary peak in the age distribution of fi rst marriages at the age of 32–33, due to the delayed marriages of the discharged soldiers. Marriage alliances were established with protestant villein villages within 15 kilometres. The choice of domicile after marriage the patrilocal model is prevalent. Sons of farmers becoming sons-in-law stayed in their village with a few exceptions. the number of sons-in-law marrying into and settling in farming families was insignificant. Endogamy in the nineteenth century was not evenly proportioned, but a gradual intensifi cation is apparent (from 25–30% to over 90%). Th e same trend can be observed for both sexes and all the four clans examined here. Th e similarity of lifestyles was a more important factor in the choice of marriage partners than the affilition to a certain social estate. The number of mixed-faith marriages was low. The examination of the parish registers and censuses conducted for different ends (local aspect), as well as genealogies, allowed the reconstruction of the domiciles of the ancestry of clans localised to 1869 down to the seventeenth century, from which time the continuity of settlements is certifi able. This way, the process of the spread of clans became traceable too. The newcomers and the cotter-turned landowners mainly settled in the upper end of the village (Felvég). Before the 1860s, the kinship exogamy was breached only once, however, from 1865, András Parti Porcs married all his five sons to members of the Porcs clan. The two most important clans, the Rákis and the Porcses lived at the opposite ends of the village and never settled into the midst of one another. The analysis of the inheritance of land is made diffi cult by the occasional comprehensive or partial re-division of urbarial land (land which belonged to the landlord but was in the usufruct of the villeins) according to urbarium or individual agreements. Th e clan histories surveyed here suggested that the parentelic succession played an important role in preserving the clan’s property. This allowed that the lands belonging to extinct branches of the clan would be inherited by other branches. As a result of increasing property fragmentation, it was mainly the number of those holding land fragments that increased, while the number of cotters hardly did, and their relative weight within the villein population even decreased. Clans deployed different strategies to curb property fragmentation. The general model was equal fi lial inheritance, but in most cases only for one or two sons, seldom more. Th e rest of the sons were compensated in other ways. In the Ráki clan, descendants without inheritance became cotters. Cotters could raise to the position of landowners after a while and vice versa. In the Porcs clan these members of the family were made sons-in-law within the same village, what is more, within the same end of the village, with the exception of two cases. Up until 1870 we know of no cotters among the Porcses. The result of these two strategies: between 1828 and 1869 the Porcses obtained several properties within the village by the sons-in-law strategy, although the total of their urbarial land properties somewhat decreased (from 4 to 3 7/8). The Rákis decreased the number of cotters in the family from 3 to 2, and managed to increase the total of their urbarial land properties (from 2 to 2 3/8).

DOI: 10.52656/KORALL.2007.03.004. 📄 Teljes cikk (PDF)