HUNGARICANA UBARIUM 1767 - BEREG COUNTY - I read every town front page of this county looking for a few names that come up in my own genealogy - and was unsettled to see how power was being played out. THE VAST MAJORITY of the places were entirely owned by one person, listed as Count Eugene - of the Schonbrun. Even when a small place had a large number of property owners and the parcels were small - say about as big as a garden needs to be to feed a family - it seems this Count had one, so he had presence everywhere. (Can you imagine what it must have been to be a farmer who counted his blessings every day that he had managed to not be a serf, yet be working his fields next to the property of a powerful, possibly nosey Count?
Years ago I was reading about the freeing of the serfs in Russia and I read all the things that these laborers who didn't even rent the land they farmed and had to turn over most of what they produced to the Lord of the Manner (or the owner of the property that they lived on and worked on.) I read a list of the things he had to provide to them, and though I'm sure that by today's standards they lived a difficult and exhausting life and were poor in the extreme, TODAY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DOES NOT HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT EACH CITIZEN HAS AS MUCH!
When you go to a town listed in a county in Hungary in 1767, and that includes the counties that go all the way up to the then Polish border, over to Austria, and including present day Croatia and Slovenia, you will find people who have the abbreviation GR next to their name, and those are the Grofs or "Counts." But there are also lots of people listed with BR next to their name meaning Baron. The GR is a class rank, and it doesn't always mean the greatest wealth, but does indicate power when the person owns many folds; apparently think acres although this measurement hasn't always been consistent.
Now, as you go to the lists that are inside the book (handwritten) for that particular person listed in the searchable text, say EUGENE, you get to see how many people are living on a property he owns that are renting land from him and how many are serfs and other notes. You also get to see how many are living or working in buildings he owns who pay rent. My guess is that EUGENE has been granted almost the entire county or the Hapsburgs have bought all that property for him to govern. A little further research and there is a possibility that this EUGENE may be a COUNT of, but his surname probably is not Shonbrun. It might be SAVOY...
Is your personal situation in this life much different that the serfs?
(To get to all the posts/genealogy tips regarding the NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF HUNGARY/ Hungaricana's URBARIUM 1767 you can search this BLOG by looking through my archives, through searching for the word URBARIUM using the Google Search Feature embedded in the blog, or by clicking on the link at the bottom of the post.)
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