53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.136

One entry of four pages in a book of the castle court of Konin for 1754, kept in the State Archive in Poznań (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu). It is the report of an inspection of the Trąbczyn estate made in July 1754 for its widowed owner. It is in Polish, with a Latin record at the end, and is one document. Part of the entry is not transcribed.

Historical background

Trąbczyn had belonged to Paweł Prusimski, chamberlain of the King, who died shortly before the summer of 1754. His widow Katarzyna, born Rozdrażewska, held the estate for life under her dower. A widow who took over an estate in this way had its condition recorded, so that she could not later be charged with what was already ruined or missing. Nine years later she was at law over potash from the same woods: 53/6/0/-/45.

The volume belongs to the archive’s fonds “Księgi sądu i urzędu grodzkiego w Koninie”, the books of the castle court and castle office of Konin. The castle office was open every day for the entry of uncontested matters, and its books had public credit: what stood in them counted as proved. A report (relatio) was the commonest kind of entry: a sworn court messenger came before the office and declared what he had seen or done, and that declaration was written into the book.

Contents

The manor farm. The inspection, of 9 July 1754, goes through the buildings at Trąbczyn one by one and says what each is built of and what state it is in. The old manor house is bad from the ground up and cannot be repaired. A new one stands finished in the frame, roofed in part, with two small rooms not quite done. Then come the kitchen, four barns of which two are falling down, a large sheepfold, a small granary with rotted sills, the carriage house, pigsties, cowshed and stables, mostly old, and the distillery and the malthouse, with their pots, vats and barrels [1].

The settlers and the people. At Nowa Wieś there are fifteen Olęder settlers; the sixteenth plot is empty, and some have built well while others have only huts dug into the ground. A count of the people who owe labour follows, village by village: in Trąbczyn four full farmers, each with eight of the lord’s draught animals, five half-farmers, seven cottagers and eight women lodgers; fewer in Osiny, Łazy and Nowa Wieś. Some peasants neither work for the manor nor hold its cattle [1].

The woods. Two noblemen who went round with the court messenger, Kazimierz Świerczewski and Józef Puchalski, sign a statement. In the pine woods of Trąbczyn that run from Osiny along the Drzewce boundary, the larger half of the better trees has been felled as far as Łomów; from there to the Biskupice boundary the finer pines have been picked out; before and beyond Czarny Bród, above Szetlewek and towards Łazy, only the leavings stand, from which nothing can be chosen for building. It is the same round the glassworks, where the finest timber was, and with the oaks, except where the Olęder settlers have taken the timber on the plots long since marked out for them [1].

The record. On Friday 12 July 1754 the court messenger Bartłomiej Szeptycki of Trąbczyn came before the castle office at Konin and declared that on the Tuesday before, at the request of Katarzyna Prusimska, he had gone with the two noblemen to Trąbczyn, then to the villages of Osiny, Łazy, Nowa Wieś, the Olęder settlement and the glassworks, and then to the woods, and had seen everything as it is written down. The record names her as the widow of Paweł Prusimski, the King’s chamberlain and heir of Trąbczyn, not long dead, holding her dower and a life interest in all his estates [1].

Form and language

The entry fills leaves 121 to 123. Its middle is not transcribed: after the malthouse, a third of the way down leaf 121 verso, the scans have a numbered description of the village houses, one by one, which runs over the whole of leaf 122 to the top of leaf 122 verso. That part is in neither the transcription nor the translation, and leaf 122 is not shown. The text takes up again at “Wieś Nowa”. The Polish is the building language of the time and is given as the editor transcribed it. The Latin record at the end is abbreviated; the transcription fills the abbreviations out.

Related holdings

The same widow’s suit over potash, 1763: 53/6/0/-/45. The decree of 1775, which describes the same woods, pond and glassworks as the ground in dispute: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145.

Scans

The archive supplied three images: one single page and two images of two facing pages each, which were cut at the fold. One of the five pages, leaf 122 recto, carries none of the transcribed text and is not shown.

Transcription

The editor transcribed the entry and supplied it by paragraph, not line by line. The transcription leaves out the description of the village houses in the middle of the entry: the rest of leaf 121 verso after the malthouse, all of leaf 122, and the top of leaf 122 verso.

Check against the scans

An AI model (Claude) read against the scans the heading, the count of people on leaf 122 verso and the whole of leaf 123, and corrected sixteen readings. The description of the manor buildings on leaf 121 and at the top of leaf 121 verso, about 540 words, was not compared. Corrections that change the sense: an unknown word, “zelaga”, is “żelaza”, ironware; two figures in the count are 8, not 6; the woods reach “above Szetlewek”, the neighbouring estate; and the gap left before the messenger’s name holds his office. Each change is logged with its reason.

Division and dating

The entry is one document. It is dated 12 July 1754, the day the report was entered at Konin; the inspection itself was made on 9 July.

Translation

The English is the editor’s own translation and was not made again. It was changed in six places where the text had been corrected. The editor’s notes on terms are kept as translator’s notes; three that commented on readings since corrected are left out. A line in square brackets marks the place of the part that is not transcribed.

Summary

The summary was written in German from the Polish and Latin and translated into English. Each of its ten statements was then checked against the document. All held.