53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.117

Thirteen entries on eighteen pages of the register of the castle court of Konin for 1778 and 1779, kept in the State Archive in Poznań (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu). Ten belong to the months after the land court’s decrees of October 1777: Stanisław Ścibor Chełmski’s suit against Antoni Prusimski on a debt he had bought, Prusimski’s appeal to the Crown Tribunal, and Chełmski’s protests against the boundary decree of 1775. Three concern trees cut at the boundaries of Trąbczyn. They are in Latin, two with a passage in Polish, and are thirteen documents.

Historical background

The commission of 1775 had given the disputed ground to Prusimski: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145. In October 1777 the land court of Kalisz, sitting at Konin, ordered him to bring that decree to the Konin records: 53/6/0/-/46. At the same sitting, on 20 October 1777, it gave a decree in another suit of Chełmski’s against him, which these entries call the decree “of the enjoined condescension”: it ordered a sitting of the court on the ground at Trąbczyn. A “condescensio” is a sitting held on the estate in dispute by the court or by a judge it deputes. That decree is not in the edition. It is probably the entry that follows the other in the land court’s book, which names the townsman Jan Tracholz and has not been worked in.

The suit, as these entries tell it: Tracholz had a claim from a contract for oak timber made in 1744 with Paweł Prusimski, Antoni’s uncle, and made it over to Chełmski. Prusimski answered that the papers that would show who owed whom lay with the heirs of his uncle’s widow, Katarzyna, born Rozdrażewska, from whom he was still suing to recover them, and that no court could judge the claim without them. The widow is the Katarzyna Prusimska of the inspection of 1754 and the potash suit of 1763: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.136, 53/6/0/-/45.

Contents

The sitting on the ground, March 1778. On 7 March 1778 Chełmski’s messenger reported that he had served a royal citation on Prusimski for the sitting fixed on the ground of Trąbczyn for the Monday after Invocavit Sunday; Prusimski was to produce there named subjects of his from Nowa Wieś [1]. Prusimski entered a protest against Chełmski and the judges of the land court: the claim bought from Tracholz was unlawful, the papers were with the heirs of his uncle’s widow, the court had earlier sent the cause with Tracholz to a sitting with those heirs, and the new decree contradicted that one [3]. On 30 March his messengers reported that they had served a citation before the Crown Tribunal at Piotrków on Chełmski and on the judge Franciszek Wierusz Walknowski, the sub-judge Stefan Zielonacki and the notary Xawery Mikorski [2].

After the sitting, April 1778. On 15 April Prusimski protested again, now also against Zielonacki as judge at the sitting on the ground: Zielonacki had, at Chełmski’s instance, sent the cause back to the full land court, although that court stood cited before the Tribunal [7]. A second citation before the Tribunal was served on Chełmski and the same officers of the court; it asks that, if the papers show a debt of Tracholz to the uncle, Chełmski be made to pay it [8]. Chełmski for his part had Prusimski cited before the land court, to have the sum made over by Tracholz adjudged to him with interest and costs [9]. A note records that the decree of remission given at the sitting on the ground was brought in [10].

Chełmski against the boundary decree, April 1778. In two protests Chełmski set his own boundary decree, given in 1775 by the commissioners brought in on his side resting on an inspection of 1592 and confirmed by his own oath at the last mound, against the one given for Prusimski. He calls the latter a private act, written after the boundary had been drawn and the mounds raised, which Prusimski had neither brought to the records of his own province nor carried out [4]. The second protest says that Prusimski’s commissioners left the inspection of the line, the raising of the mounds and the taking of the oath to Albert Czarnecki, boundary chamberlain of Kalisz, whom Prusimski had engaged; that Czarnecki had the decree written some weeks after the commissioners had gone; and that Prusimski’s fellow-swearers were unfit [5].

Trees. A messenger reported for Prusimski that a pine several decades old, marked with three crosses, on a mound dividing Trąbczyn from Biskupie, had been cut down and taken at night by Bogusławski, heir of a part of Kurów [6]. On 29 January 1779 the same messenger reported twelve stumps of freshly cut pines on Trąbczyn’s own ground and more beyond and between the mounds, cut by subjects of Rzgów, and laid before the office twenty axes taken from them as they fled [11]. Marcin Nosalski, heir of Rzgów, protested: his people had been carting trees on sledges from Chełmski’s woods when Prusimski’s men stopped them on the public road, beat them and took their axes; he means to have those men shut out from giving testimony [12]. A note records that a copy of Prusimski’s protest against the Nosalskis was brought in [13].

The commissioners’ decree that Chełmski praises in his two protests is the “unilateral act” against which five of the parliament’s commissioners protested in 1775, and for which Prusimski’s men searched at Konin in 1776: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.116.

Form and language

Each entry stands among others on its page; the pages are shown whole and the other entries are not transcribed. Seven of the thirteen are long entries in a formulaic Latin in which most words are abbreviated. They were read against the scans a second time, word for word; some words in them remain marked as doubtful. Two reports give what the messenger saw in Polish. Antoni Prusimski here calls Paweł Prusimski his “patruus”, his father’s brother; no other holding says how the two were related. Chełmski’s first protest has no heading on the photographed page. The note of the decree of remission points to a text “opposite, under the sign #”, which is not on the photographed pages. Six entries have no dated heading of a sitting above them; three are dated by the heading elsewhere on the opening, three from the headings before and after, and each says so.

Related holdings

The commission’s decree: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145. The register before this one: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.116. The land court’s decree of October 1777: 53/6/0/-/46. Katarzyna Prusimska: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.136, 53/6/0/-/45.

Scans

The folder has fifteen photographs of this book, each showing two facing pages. Each was cut at the fold. Eighteen of the thirty halves carry an entry that is transcribed and are shown whole; twelve are left out. The photographs are from Skanoteka, the scanning project of the Polish genealogical society (skanoteka.genealodzy.pl), and carry its watermark across the middle of the image.

Transcription

The editor transcribed the entries that concern Trąbczyn and supplied them by paragraph, with the Latin written out. The long entries are a first reading and mark more than two hundred words as doubtful.

Check against the scans

An AI model (Claude) read the holding against the scans in two passes and corrected 209 readings. The first pass was a light one: every heading and date line, the names of the judges, and five of the eighteen pages word for word (the report of 7 March 1778, the report on the boundary pine, the report of January 1779 and Nosalski’s protest), 50 readings. At the editor’s word the long Latin of the seven other entries was then read through, eleven pages, and 159 more readings were corrected. About 45 words remain marked as doubtful: they were looked at and could not be read with confidence.

Those that change the sense: Prusimski is cited to “produce” his subjects at the sitting on the ground, not to hold them; the judges are Walknowski and Mikorski, and a line the transcription had passed over is restored in the first citation to the Tribunal; the boundary mound, not a second estate, bears the name written above the line; the men of Rzgów were taken “as they fled” with the pines; Nosalski’s people were carting trees “on sledges”, and he means to have Prusimski’s two men “shut out from giving testimony”. One word was corrected throughout, sixteen times: “Patrui”, the uncle’s, for “Patrii” or “Patris”, the father’s. It was looked at on one page, where it is written “Patruj”, and corrected elsewhere on that ground. Chełmski’s signature under his two protests was added.

The second pass found three passages where the transcription had passed over a line or part of one, and restored them: two in Prusimski’s protest of 15 April 1778, one in the citation served on him on 25 April. It found one sign misread throughout: the clerk’s “p” with a stroke is “per”, by, where the transcription had “pro”, for; so the claim was acquired “by” Chełmski, and the decree of 1775 was given “by” his commissioners. And it found one word misread in Chełmski’s two protests: “jurto” is “juramento”, the oath he swore at the last mound in 1775, where the transcription had “jurisdiction”. Other corrections that change the sense: Chełmski says Prusimski treated his own commissioners’ act as “invalid” (the English had “inviolable”); one of Prusimski’s fellow-swearers is “lacking full sense”; the land judge, asked to send the cause to the Tribunal, sent it back “to himself and the whole court”; and the sums in question were borrowed by Tracholz from Prusimski’s uncle, not the other way round. Each change is logged with its reason.

Division and dating

Each entry is a document. The note of Prusimski’s first protest and the text it points to on the facing leaf are one. Four documents are dated by the line “Actum in Conin” directly above them and three by the heading of their sitting elsewhere on the opening. Six have no dated heading on a photographed page: four are dated to the month from the headings before and after them, two to the year. Each says so.

Translation

The English is the editor’s own translation and was not made again. It was changed in 62 places where the text had been corrected, and “father” was made “uncle” in fifteen.

Summaries

The summaries were written in German from the Latin and Polish and translated into English. Each of their 54 statements was then checked against its document and rests on words that are not marked as doubtful. All held.