Page 76 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Markéta Skořepová

Table 2.7 Number of Cottages and Small Houses According to the Indebtedness Rate
at the Beginning and End of the Holding Period of Individual Householders
Share of debt Upon takeover At the end of holding
on the price for – – – – – – – –
the homestead        
–     –    
–  –    – –  
–  –    –   
–  –  –  – –  –
–  – –   – – – –
–  –    – –  –
Total        
Notes Only the first transfers in given periods are included. Based on data from na, apa
i, inv. no. 1754, and 2609; na, apa, vs , inv. no. 52, 53, and 60.

because the annual payment decreased from six to only three kopas of
groschen during this period. The situation improved very slowly until the
premature death of Tomáš Vacek in 1719. His widow remarried, but her
new husband was not able to manage the farm successfully. After a de-
stroying fire in 1727, she decided to make over the homestead to her son
Jiří. However, the new head died too young, leaving six children. Their un-
cle took charge of the farm for six years, of course not for free. Then, Matěj
Vacek, the son of Jiří, assumed his heritage. He probably saw a solution to
the desperate economic condition of the farm in marriage to a rich widow,
Kateřina. Unfortunately, he died seven years later in 1757, as a father of
a little daughter and another three stepchildren, and also responsible for
his five younger sisters. Kateřina remarried twice again: in 1759 and then in
1762. Only her fourth husband Pavel Nacházel achieved repayment of the
worst debts. When he made over the farm to a son from Kateřina’s first
marriage in 1776, it was valued at 156 kopas and burdened with debts of 80
kopas (na, apa, vs , inv. č. 60, fol. 111.)
Inheritance claims were the main cause of indebtedness even for smaller
homesteads, cottages and small houses. The first generation of their hold-
ers only sometimes had a calculated price, the records of debts do not ap-
pear at all, and later only the obligation to provide for old parents or pay off
siblings is mentioned. From the 1770s, the amounts owed began to be cal-
culated more regularly, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
indebtedness rate upon takeover of a cottage or small house was already
comparable to the percentage of debts that the incoming full farmers had

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