Page 62 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Markéta Skořepová

trol over the family, social and economic life of rural people. An unpleasant
consequence for researchers is the loss of the former clarity of the record
sources: the data is scattered in different types of documents, and many
entries in the land registers only refer to documents which were recorded
and stored at some other office or were handed over directly to the partic-
ipants in the given dealings.
The key set of information about the number and size of village home-
steads and their economy originates from the Theresian Cadastre, whose
preparation took nearly half a century, from the tax declaration requested
in 1713 to the final version declared in 1757. For the Červená Řečice estate,
it is even more important than for other regions because the files also con-
tain the transcripts of two older cadastres, the so-called Berní rula from
1654 and its revision, Revizitace berní ruly, from 1674 which did not survive
in their original form (na, tk, inv. no. 3056, 886).
In general, problems arise with the recording of smaller homesteads that
were gradually founded on common land or were separated from a larger
full-sized farm. They were often entered in land registers no earlier than
several years after they were built up, the changes of householders and in-
heritance claims were sometimes very carelessly recorded, and the entries
in the land register were often squeezed onto the free end of the page. In
addition, the existence of cottages and small houses standing on the farm
plots did not have to be permanent. A modest building may have been
temporarily used, for example, by a sibling of the householder and then
reattached to the original farm to serve, perhaps, as a dwelling for retired
parents (Skořepová 2023). Small homesteads without land or with only a
minimal portion of land are systematically recorded for the first time in a
file of the Theresian Cadastre from 1722, that is, by a state representative
who had evaluated the older manorial declaration as inaccurate (na, tk,
inv. no. 3056, 886). The landlord evidence captured small, landless houses
in the manorial register of subjects’ duties in 1740, which described the ex-
tent of land and duties belonging to every single homestead, regardless of
its size (na, apa, vs , inv. no. 1).

The Extent of Villages and Homesteads in the Zmišovice
Judicial District
The original number of 34 farms and a cottage, apparently founded in the
Middle Ages, remained constant over the next hundred years. However,
it is likely that during the war years of 1618–1648, when several armies
passed through the Červená Řečice estate, at least part of the homesteads

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