39/98/0/-/6603

The file of the liquidation table of the village “Колонія Лазинская”, the Łazińsk colony in the commune of Trąbczyn, kept in the State Archive in Łódź (Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi) in the records of the Kalisz Governorate Board for Peasant Affairs (Urząd Gubernialny Kaliski do Spraw Włościańskich). It holds the table approved in 1868, the copy made of it in 1869 for the governorate government, and the inscriptions and statement that later changed it, to 1901. Albert Breyer copied the same table into his notebook in the 1930s, from a copy dated at Słupca on 29 June 1868, 53/968/0/-/716.

Historical background

The Russian ukases of 19 February (2 March) 1864 made the peasants of the Kingdom of Poland owners of the land they farmed. For each village a liquidation table recorded the farmsteads, their land, the dues the government would compensate, and the capital owed to the former owner; the peasants kept their servitudes, rights of pasture and wood in the manor forest, which were later bought out or exchanged for land. The Kalisz commission for peasant affairs, from 1870 the governorate board, drew up and kept these tables and entered later changes in them. The Łazińsk colony was one of the two Olęder colonies founded on the Trąbczyn estate, whose settlers had gone to law with Count Włodzimierz Miączyński over the same forest in 1859 and 1860, 53/968/0/-/783.

Contents

The table lists 91 farmsteads of the colony, each with its land in Morgen and rods, and then the farmstead of the village school, the common cemetery, a plot of common land, the village head’s plot, one more farmstead and the land under the roads: 1,691 Morgen 219 rods in all, of which 9 Morgen 224 rods unusable. The dues the government compensates come to 603 roubles 34⅕ kopecks. On 8 February 1868 the Central Commission for Peasant Affairs confirmed the table and fixed the liquidation capital for the former owner at 10,055 roubles 70 kopecks [1].

The copy, made at Kalisz on 10 September 1869 to be kept at the governorate government, has the same entries in another hand. Beside the first entries it states the servitudes: all the peasants of the Łazińsk Hollanders may graze the cattle they have in the forest “Studzianka” and gather fallen wood there twice a week, and have no other rights [2].

In March 1884 an inscription in the copy, under a resolution of the governorate board of 25 February 1882, fixed the fuel each farmstead might take from the forest at 104 cloth-loads a year, equal to 10½ two-horse carts, and allowed the farmsteads to graze 408 head of horned cattle there [3]. By a voluntary transaction of 14 June 1892, recorded in an inscription of 12 October 1894, the peasants gave up their rights of pasture and wood-gathering in the forest to the owner of Trąbczyn, Countess Maria Wielopolska, and received 393 Morgen 154 rods of manor land [4]. A survey of 1896, recorded in an inscription of 29 November 1897, put the whole allotment at 1,068 desiatins 1,272 sazhens [5], and a statement gives each farmstead’s land after it, under buildings and gardens, arable, meadow, pasture and unusable [6].

Form and language

Russian, in the spelling of before 1918. The table is a printed form filled in by hand, with columns for the land of each farmstead and for the dues; the copy is another hand on the same form; the inscriptions of 1894 and 1897 are certified copies on separate sheets. The tables are given as tables. Where the writing runs across an opening, the two pages are shown as one.

Related holdings

Albert Breyer’s notebook with his copies of this table and of the servitudes, and of the tables of Emilienheim and Orliny: 53/968/0/-/716. The summons of 1860 in the colonists’ dispute over the forest: 53/968/0/-/783. Breyer’s notebooks of 1936 on Łazińsk: 53/968/0/-/669.

Scans

The archive’s scans, 27 images numbered 000 to 036, show only the written pages of the file. Where the writing runs across an opening (the editor named 013/014, 026/027 and 028/029; 016/017 is the same, as the servitudes stand on the right-hand page beside the first entries), each scan was cut at its page edge, since each shows a strip of the facing page, and the two halves were joined into one page image. The edges were placed in session and approved by the editor. The archive’s stamps, numbers and seals are not transcribed; they can be seen on the scans.

Transcription

There was no transcription of the tables. An AI model (Claude) read the file from the scans, each page in strips at about twice the size. The editor’s notes beside the scans render some passages, the confirmations and the inscriptions, in modern spelling with an English translation; they were read against the scans, which the transcription follows, in the old spelling (ѣ, і, ъ). Words not read are marked “[?]”; words read with doubt carry “?” inside square brackets. There were 21 such marks. The editor read them all on a sheet that shows each beside a picture of its place and settled three; 18 remain, among them eleven signatures. The editor has not checked the rest of the reading.

The figures were checked by their own sums. In the table, the land of all the entries adds up to the total, 1,691 Morgen 219 rods, and the dues to 603 roubles 34⅕ kopecks. In the statement of 1896 each row was added across and each column down to the totals at the foot. This showed which figures had been misread, and that in four rows the clerk’s figures, as written, do not add up: the transcription gives them as written and the notes say what the totals imply.

Division and dating

Six documents, at the editor’s choice: the table, its copy (labelled the copy, as it calls itself one), the inscription of 1884, the certified copies of the inscriptions of 1894 and 1897, and the statement after the survey of 1896. The table is dated by its confirmation, 8 February 1868, and the copy by its certification at Kalisz, 10 September 1869. The certified copies, made in 1900 and 1901, take the dates of the inscriptions they copy, 12 October 1894 and 29 November 1897, as a copy takes the date of what it copies. The statement has no date; it is dated to 1897, the year of the inscription that put its figures into the table. All six stand in the era of the liquidation.

Tables

Three documents are given as tables: the table, its copy and the statement. The columns are those of the printed form: the entry’s number, the name, the number in the draft table, the land under the dwelling and garden, arable, meadow, pasture, unusable and in all, each in Morgen and rods, and the dues in roubles and kopecks; in the statement, desiatins and sazhens. Two dots stand where the clerk wrote them for nothing, a ditto mark where the copy has one. Two later pencil figures over entries in the table stand in the name cell after a dash. The text of the right-hand page of the form follows the entries of its page.

Translation

The English was written by the AI model from the reading. In the tables only the names and the words are translated, and every figure stands in the same cell as in the original. Names are transliterated letter by letter, without the hard sign at the end of a word, so a German name written in Russian appears in its Russian form (Merts Karl). Morgen is kept; прентъ is a rod, the Polish pręt; плахта, the cloth in which wood was carried, is a cloth-load.

Summary

The summaries were written in German from the reading and translated into English. Each of their statements was then checked against the document. Nothing in them rests on a word read with doubt.