Appendix C · Incomplete, as noted in the manuscript

Register

Literature · Measures · Terms · Names · Places

The manuscript lists this appendix with the note “Incomplete” and names in it literature, abbreviations, a glossary of terms as well as an index of names and one of places. Of these, only the glossary has so far been worked out — it begins with the entry Liberum Veto. This page gathers what is documented throughout the whole volume: the sources, the units, the terms and the names under which the family appears in the records.

Literature and sources

What the volume uses

Three works recur constantly in the text: Maercker’s district chronicle for conditions in the villages, the contribution cadastres for the figures, and the Słownik Geograficzny for the period in Russian Poland. Alongside them stand the archival records.

Secondary works

Kreis SchwetzMaercker: Geschichte des Kreises Schwetz (History of the district of Schwetz). The standard work on the villages, rights, dues and owners in the district of Schwetz.
Village gazetteerSłownik Geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego (Geographical dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland), multi-volume, in Polish, 1880s. The basis for the villages of the fourth and fifth generations in Russian Poland.
PolandNorman Davies: Im Herzen Europas — Geschichte Polens (In the heart of Europe — a history of Poland). After Heart of Europe. A Short History of Poland, Oxford 1984 and 1986; German edition, 4th impression 2006.
Soldiers’ familiesBernhard Lindenblatt: Preußenland. Geschichte Ost- und Westpreußens 1701–1945 (Prussia: a history of East and West Prussia 1701–1945). Kiel 2001, pp. 66–67 — the only social-historical study on the life of a soldier’s family cited in the text.
MennonitesHorst Penner: Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten (The Mennonites of East and West Prussia). Contains the probate inventory of a leased farm of 1744, reproduced in Appendix 5.
MilitaryCurt Jany: Geschichte der Kgl. Preußischen Armee (History of the Royal Prussian Army), volumes 1 to 3 · Otto Büsch: Militärsystem und Sozialleben im alten Preußen 1713–1807 (System of military service and social life in old Prussia 1713–1807) · Ranglisten der Kgl. Preußischen Armee (Rank lists of the Royal Prussian Army) of 1808, 1809, 1812 · A. v. Lyncker: Die preußische Armee 1807–1867 und ihre sippenkundlichen Quellen (The Prussian army 1807–1867 and its genealogical sources).
PartitionsBömelburg / Kizik on Prussian policy in West Prussia · Schmidt · Hackmann · Krzeminski · Czesław Miłosz: Geschichte der polnischen Literatur (History of Polish literature). The quotations in Appendix 7 are each attributed by name in the manuscript.
JournalDie Gartenlaube (1856). Ernst Keil, Leipzig 1856. Full digital text edition at Wikisource.

Archival records

Parish registersCatholic parishes Swiete / Schwenten, Swiecie / Schwetz, Nowe / Neuenburg, Przesiersk / Heinrichsdorf, Lipowiec Kościelny, Szrensk, Bielsk; Protestant parishes Groß Nebrau, Graudenz (Grudziądz), Mlawa (Mława), Bischofswerder.
ArchivesEvangelisches Zentralarchiv Berlin (Evangelical Central Archive), holdings EZA 980/6190, 980/6194, 980/6220, 980/6881 · Archion · military parish registers of Danzig (Gdańsk) and Graudenz · State Archive Płock.
Mormon filmsThe film numbers 1194822, 1194825, 1497008, 17245, 172506 and 7949029 open up registers whose originals are no longer accessible on the spot.
CadastreWest Prussian contribution cadastre of 1772/73 with the assessments and designations for Marzy Nowe, Stwolno Niemieckie, Muntau (Mątowo), Schwenten and Groß Schönwalde.
Official gazettesAmts-Blatt der Königlich Preußischen Regierung zu Marienwerder (Official gazette of the Royal Prussian government at Marienwerder), 1819 (no. 27 of 2 July) and 1830 · Amts-Blatt der Königlichen Regierung zu Marienwerder, no. 49/1939, page 9, Graudenz City Library (wanted notice for Anna Maria Bommert).
Search fileOnline portal of the Foreign Search Service for Displaced Persons of the Second World War — a record of 2023 concerning two relatives who were deported (Appendix 1d).

Measures and coins

What the records count in

The sources reckon in Prussian units and in Polish gulden; height in the wanted notices is given in feet and inches. Anyone who wants to check the details needs both.

Fuß: 37.66 cm. Prussian unit of length (foot); in the wanted notice for Anna Maria Bommert the basis of the statement “4 feet 4 inches”.
Zoll: One tenth of a Fuß, that is 3.766242 cm. A height of 4 feet 4 inches therefore corresponds to about 1.66 m.
Hufe (Hube): Measure of area for peasant holdings (English hide); its size varied from region to region. In Stwolno Niemieckie 29 Huben 13 Morgen behind the dam and 3 Huben 17½ Morgen in front of the dam are named.
Morgen: The smaller unit of area; 30 Morgen were usually reckoned as one Hufe.
Rute: Unit of length for roads, dams and boundaries (rod). The Vistula (Wisła) dyke near Stwolno Niemieckie was about 800 Ruten long.
Quadratrute: The smallest unit of area in the cadastres (square rod); it appears in the designation for Muntau as the last column of the number of Huben.
Elle: Unit of length for cloth (ell). As payment in kind 10 ells of flax linen, 10 ells of shirting linen and 3 ells for apron and shoes are recorded.

Reichstaler (rt): The principal coin of the Prussian cadastres and records (imperial thaler). In 1772/73 a linen weaver paid one Reichstaler, a smallholder sixty groschen.
Groschen (gr): The smaller unit in relation to the Reichstaler (groschen).
Gulden (Gld.): Prussian gulden, in which purchase monies for leasehold tenancies were paid. In Stwolno Niemieckie: 6,400 gulden for the whole village.
Einkaufsgeld: Entry money: a one-off payment with which tenants bought their way into an emphyteutic village. A hurdle at which Instleute (farm labourers bound to the estate) and craftsmen failed.
Grundvermögen: Minimum property: the holding required under Prussian law of 1819 for permission to distil — 15,000 Reichstaler. Without it the distillery stayed beyond the border.
Löhne: Wages: per Hufe one middle farmhand and one maidservant were reckoned. A head farmhand could receive up to 16 rt and four shirts, a middle farmhand 10 to 12 rt and three shirts, a maidservant 4 rt 40 gr.
Sold: Eight groschen for five days — the pay of the common soldier, on which according to Lindenblatt no family could live.

Abbreviations

How the references are cited

KB: Kirchenbuch (parish register). A suffix assigns the confession: Kat(h). KB for Catholic, Ev. KB for Protestant registers.
Ksp.: Kirchspiel — the district of a parish church in which baptism, marriage and burial took place.
EZA: Evangelisches Zentralarchiv Berlin. The holdings number follows the pattern EZA 980/6220 (Kreis, parish).
Archion: The German parish register portal; the image number refers to the digitised page.
Mormon film no.: Number of a register filmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
oo: Married to. Multiple marriages are numbered consecutively with 1. oo, 2. oo, 3. oo.
* and †: Birth and death. Where the entry is calculated, “err.” is added; where it is estimated, the chronicle gives a range, usually “± 5 years”.
gm., pow., woj.: Polish administrative designations: Gmina (commune), Powiat (district), Wojewodschaft (voivodeship).
rk, ev: In Polish records the short form for Roman Catholic and Protestant.
uxor, laboriosus, gorzelany, mularz, płociennik: Latin and Polish occupational and personal designations of the sources: wife, labourer, distiller, miller, linen weaver.
“beurlaubt”: In Prussian death entries the designation of a military person on leave — in Christian’s case of 1803 presumably a musketeer on leave.

Glossary of terms

Terms that recur constantly in the text

The manuscript begins this glossary with the entry Liberum Veto and the note that it is incomplete. The following entries are documented from the text of the volume itself.

Liberum Veto

“Free veto” in the Polish imperial diet, the Sejm. This highest organ of the realm was dominated by the high clergy and the noble magnate cliques, and since 1505 the king, who was likewise elected by the diet, could decide almost nothing without the approval of this assembly. The resolutions of the Sejm had in practice to be unanimous, or at least passed without a contrary vote; if a single deputy entered his veto, the resolution was void. The constitution of 3 May 1791 abolished this right — too late.

Republic of the nobility

The Rzeczpospolita, the Polish-Lithuanian republic of the nobility of 1569 to 1795. The king was an elected king and was chosen by the Sejm; power lay with the nobility.

Saxon Night

The period of the Saxon-Polish personal union of 1697 to 1763: the Saxon elector was at the same time king of Poland. The republic of the nobility, previously praised for its religious tolerance, now counted as the very embodiment of backwardness.

Kingdom of Poland, Congress Poland, Russian Poland

Re-established in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna as a monarchy and placed under the tsar, who remained king of Poland — hence Congress Poland. The division into ten voivodeships followed in 1867 after incorporation into the Russian Empire and lasted until 1918; for this period the term is Russian Poland.

Eastern colonisation and repopulation

The settlement of people in the thinly populated regions east of the Elbe, carried by state recruitment. Its basis was the underpopulation created by wars: much waste or abandoned land.

Deserted farms

Abandoned, unworked peasant holdings. Their reoccupation was the express aim of the Prussian invitation patent of 20 September 1711.

Free years

The years of exemption from all public dues after settlement, graded according to the wealth brought along — six, three or one year.

Estates and occupations in the village

Farmhand and maidservant: Farm servants in the peasant’s household, without a household of their own; as immigrants employed on royal demesne farms, at increased wages.
Einlieger: One who owns no house of his own and lives in rented rooms (lodger). The term arose from landless labourers who lodged with peasants and worked for them in return.
Instmann: Migrant agricultural labourer with a fixed contract, usually for two to three years; he rented living quarters, a garden and a little land. The position of the family in the second generation.
Eigenkätner: Also called Gärtner, Hintersasse, Kötner, Kossäte. The owner of a small holding with house and garden; counted among the “little people in the village”.
Kleinbauer: Small farmer: three-quarters or half a Hufe, without all the rights of the old village community.
Vollbauer: Full farmer: the tenant of a whole farmstead; in Stwolno Niemieckie only against a purchase money of 6,400 gulden.
Hofgut und Vorwerk: Estate farms in noble or royal hands, apart from the villages; they took in farm servants, Einlieger and migrant labourers.
Emphyteuse: Hereditary lease or fixed-term lease against purchase money, usually for fifty years (emphyteusis). Still present in the language in “emphyteutic village”.
Kontributionskataster: The Prussian tax registration of 1772/73 after the annexation of West Prussia; it records heads of family, household members, livestock and landholdings.
Designation: The register of persons and property of a village, in columns: names, condition, persons, livestock, number of Huben.
Krug und Krüger: Tavern, public house or inn; the Krüger is the hereditary tenant of the Krug. Krugs stood at places where people had to wait — church, mill, ferry, post station.
Brenner: Polish gorzelany: brandy distiller. Peter’s occupation after his discharge from the army; in Prussia the licence was tied to 15,000 Reichstaler.
Feldscher: “Half-doctor”, placed between physician and medical orderly. The role that tradition ascribes to Peter.
Kurrentschrift: The old German cursive script of the parish registers; the reason why numerous entries in the manuscript are described as “hard to read” and are transcribed.

Appendix C

Index of names and places: not yet

At this point the manuscript has two indexes, and both are still unworked there: the index of names and the index of places. That is no oversight. As long as the text grows, every assignment an index would fix changes, and with every insertion the page numbers to which it would have to refer shift. An index belongs at the end of the work, at the print-ready stage; then it will be supplied — for the volume and for this online edition.

Until then the chapters themselves lead the way: every page states among its sources where it comes from, and this register explains the terms, the measures and the coins. The names of the neighbourhood with whom the family appears in the same records between 1717 and 1724 are gathered on the page of the fellow immigrants.

How identical first names are distinguished

The author distinguishes persons of the same first name by a Roman numeral in brackets after the name. It applies within the family, not in local history: Johann Friedrich (II.) carries the Graudenz main line, Gottfried Friedrich (III.) is his son and an Instmann, Gottfried Friedrich (IV.) the latter’s son and a butcher in Neudorf near Graudenz. With the numerals a name becomes unambiguous again, even if the same first name recurs in every generation.

Two numerals are doubly assigned. “Peter (II.)” stands once for the son of Marianne born in 1748, once for the son from Peter’s (I.) second marriage. And “Peter (III.)” is borne both by the musketeer, distiller and innkeeper of the main line (* 1778) and — in the line of descent of the Kulm line — by a son of Johann. The author is not yet through with this numeral series; it stands here as it stands in the manuscript, so that no one takes it for finished.

What is still missing here

What stands here comes from the volume itself. What is missing is missing in the manuscript too: the index of names and the index of places in Appendix C are not worked out there, and the glossary breaks off after the first entry.

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