Page 124 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Aleksander Panjek and Miha Zobec

however, seem to be supported by the above-mentioned large number of
legal proceedings concerning debt collection.

The Third Century: From the Village Elite
to the Vienna Parliament³
Oneofthe sons of thelast mayor recorded in theeighteenthcentury,
Marko (son of Anton), named Marko like his father, was the wealthiest
man in Tomaj in 1820, or at least his farm was by far the largest in the vil-
lage. There were altogether 73 holdings and households in Tomaj, and most
of them measured less than ten hectares, the median being six hectares.
Marko Černe’s holding measured an amazing 44 hectares, of which more
than eight were arable land (the rest being grassland), the median in Tomaj
being 1.7 hectares. He was one of the only three household heads in the
family branch stemming from Tomaž (early eighteenth century) and con-
centrated in his hands the vast majority of the land belonging to this
branch. The other branch, stemming from Tomaž’s brother Andrej, was
composed of six family heads (but one of them lived at a nephew’s house),
two of which were among the wealthiest peasants in Tomaj, as well: Mi-
hael, son of Jožef, with 28.6 ha and Anton, son of Franc, with close to 20 ha
(see figure 4.1). Since only three households in Tomaj possessed between
twenty and thirty hectares of land, the Černes occupied a good portion
among the wealthiest in the village at the beginning of the nineteenth
century.⁴ All possible considerations apart, it is clear that the numerous
marriages within the wider family in the previous years and decades bore
fruit and the Černes successfully limited the fragmentation of their landed
property.
The Černe family held the mayor’s position also in the nineteenth cen-
tury, when the function was in the hands of (at least) Mihael (1821–1822,
šak, žat, mkk 7a), as well as Marko and his son, Anton Černe.⁵Of course,
the Černe family was not the only one that formed the village elite in the
period in question (nineteenth century). As earlier, a handful of families
stood out from the village fabric and occupied politically or socially rel-
evant positions such as mayors and church elders. Among these families

³ This section is based on Zobec (2024).
⁴ These figures are the result of calculations on data from 1820 taken from the Franciscean
cadaster (ast, cf, oc, Tomaj), made by Leonida Ravšelj. We thank her very much for hav-
ing very kindly ceded us these unpublished figures.
⁵ For functions the family Černe held in the nineteenth century, see the family’s legacy in
pang, 939.

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