Page 123 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

A Dynasty of Mayors and a Member of Parliament

borrowed from the Roman law and prescribed that all children, both male
and female, had a right to equal shares in succession, provided there was no
written will by the deceased defining the division between heirs (Kambič
2007). In the time of transitioning and adjusting to the new system, which
greatly differed from the previous, in which male heirs were in principle
equal while female ones received a dowry (Panjek 2021), at least part of
the Černe family seemingly opted for arresting the fragmentation through
cross-marriages.
With the eighth generation we enter a time and vicissitudes that are
mostly already recorded in local chronicles. We will stick to them and nar-
row the reconstruction of the family history to the part of it which is most
relevant for the discussed topic. The focus will be on the male representa-
tives who continued to be based in Tomaj. In fact, Albin Kjuder mentions
also other family members, who married elsewhere and gave birth to chil-
dren who would engage in intellectual professions (Kjuder 1956, 891). But
alreadywithinthisgeneration,figuresbegantostemfromtheČernefamily
who made a career outside the scope of the village and the manorial terri-
tory. They mostly belonged to the family branch known in the village under
the name Fabjanijevi and derived from Anton, son of Tomaž, whose widow
Marina (born Fabjan) in 1758 was recorded as head of a holding, a half-farm
that had belonged to her deceased father Ivan Fabjan.² Cases of careers in-
clude Jakob (born 1780), son of Marko and Anton’s grandson, who became
priestandcanonintheSt.JustCathedralinthecityofTrieste.Inhiswillhe
established a fund to finance scholarships. His elder brother Marko (born
1769) was the founder of the sub-branch that retained and developed the
prominence of the family. He married as many as four times and had al-
together seventeen children with three wives, while the first marriage was
annulled because his wife, being a ‘hermaphrodite,’ could not bear children
(Kjuder 1956, 892; ast, atta 207.1, 2). Marko also held the position of
mayor in Tomaj in the years of the French Illyrian Provinces. Kjuder re-
ports rumours, stating that at that time it was the mayor who chose the
young men who had to go to the army, the service lasting seven years, and
a mayor could make good money out of it. In fact, the father preferred to
go to the mayor and try an agreement ‘face-to-face – give me that land of
yours and the boy will stay at home’ (Kjuder 1956, 893). These rumours,

² ast, atta, 242.1, 3; šak, žat, mku 3. The surname Fabjanijevi (the Fabjans) must have
been due to Anton’s marriage with a Fabjan heiress and the later inheritance of the Fabjan
holding by his son.

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