Page 115 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

A Dynasty of Mayors and a Member of Parliament

Ivan, since both are forms of the same name (šak, žat, mkk 1). A possi-
ble hypothesis would be that both Ivan (Joannes, his first child registered in
1626) and Anže (Joannes Baptista, first child registered in 1635) were sons
of Just, of which the older married in Dutovlje and the younger stayed in
Tomaj, while Nikolaj (first child registered in 1640) and Matija (first child
registered in 1641) were sons of Andrej.
The next (fourth) generation starts appearing as fathers in 1660 and is
fertile until 1681: Marko (son of Ivan from Dutovlje) and Gašper (not men-
tioned at baptism but probably Anže’s son), both in Tomaj, while Tomaž
(Nikolaj’s son) is first registered as living in Utovlje, later in Tomaj and,
at the birth of his last child, in Dobravlje. Since the name of his wife re-
mained the same, it is probable he moved among the family properties or
that errors in the registrations occurred. This is the first generation of male
representatives ofthe Černefamily forwhich wehave completedataabout
the births of their children (apart from a gap in registrations in 1661–1662;
šak, žat, mkk 2 and 3).

The Second Century: A Peasant Dynasty of Mayors
The fifth generation of the male representatives of the Černe family start-
ed procreating in 1696, indeed, with an incident, since Andrej Černe (born
in 1673 in Tomaj, Marko’s son) had an illegitimate child with a woman from
one of the oldest families in the village, Marina Rože, daughter of the de-
ceased Pavel. The baby girl was baptized as Marina, like her mother. At that
time, his father Marko held the position of mayor in Tomaj, meaning the
Černe family had undoubtedly entered the ranks of the village elite. In-
deed, this is the first time a Černe was Tomaj’s mayor, at least based on
the documentation we managed to survey, meaning there would hardly
had been a worse moment for the mayor’s son to incur such a situation.
The character and the life of Andrej is particularly relevant to our topic, al-
lowing an insight into the values of the village community and the impact
that certain behaviours had on the career of a person belonging to the vil-
lage elite. For this reason, we will dedicate some attention to Andrej Černe,
without going into excessive detail for the sake of brevity.
While still pregnant, Marina Rože appealed to the manorial court for an
alimony from the child’s father and obtained the judgement that Andrej
Černe had to give her ‘so much grain, legumes, vegetable soups, condi-
ments’ and other things with a total value of fifteen florins. In the case
he did not comply, a fine of twenty marks was determined. Andrej also
promised to find, at his own expense, ‘a wet nurse to breastfeed said ba-

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