Page 134 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Aleksander Panjek and Miha Zobec

science. After finishing the school Emil was conscripted into the Austrian
army. His comeback to Tomaj is recorded in 1905, when he was engaged in
setting a grain threshing machine in a nearby village, in addition to build-
ing a vineyard, fashioned according to modern principles. The vineyard,
as chronicled by Albin Kjuder, brought new prestige to the family (Kjuder
1956,894–5; PANG 939,9). However, the society underwentchanges too
notable for Franc or Emil Artur to restore the family’s prestige.

Godfatherhood as a Measure of Social Prestige in the Long Run
Our reconstruction of godfatherhood follows the principle adopted in pre-
senting the Černe family history and is thus restricted to the family’s male
line. Disregarding women, who had a wider family network stretching to
thefamily oforiginaswellasthe onetheymarried into,enablesustolim-
it and simplify the analysis. In this area, all children had a godfather and
a godmother at baptism. Although undoubtedly interesting, including the
female part of the family would be an excessively time-consuming endeav-
our within this research and the collected data would have a lower level of
reliability and completeness.
On the one hand we should trace the marriages of all the Černe sisters to
identify their new surname, with which they were registered on every oc-
casion after getting married, including when acting as godmothers at bap-
tisms. This could be done, but almost unsolvable cases of homonyms may
be expected, both with regard to women with the same name and surname,
as well as with regard to correctly identifying baptisms within their family
of origin in the quite common cases in which the surname of origin was
widespread.A complete review of Černewives,on the other hand, would
be questionable, because marriages were celebrated in the church of the
villagewhere thewifecame from. Forthisreason, it would benecessary to
search for marriages of Černe men also in registers of other parishes, not
knowinginadvancewheretosearch forthem.Includingwiveswouldthere-
fore be feasible, although with the limitations mentioned in the case of the
sisters, only for wives coming from the same Tomaj parish as their Černe
husbands. Since our aim is to construct and analyse a long-term database,
in this phase of the research it seems reasonable to limit ourselves to the
male line, on which we have certain data, because there were no unrelated
Černe families.
As in the case of births, information on godfathers at baptism is only
available from 1625 onwards. We first sketch some general characteristics
of godfatherhood at the parish level and then at the family level, concen-

132