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130
Historical Social Research, Vol. 30 — 2005 — No. 3, 130-170
Between “Traditional” Collectivity and “Modern”
Individuality: An Atomistic Perspective on Family
and Household astride the Hajnal Line (Upper Silesia
and Great Poland at the End of the 18th Century)
Mikołaj Szołtysek & Konrad Rzemieniecki∗
Abstract: These are the first results of a larger project on
residential patterns in thirty five parishes of western and
southern Poland and Silesia at the turn of 18th century. This
study is focused on several aspects of household character-
istics and life-course patterns in three communities of Great
Poland and Upper Silesia. The model of the inter-relation-
ships between peasant households and landowners in central
Poland developed by Polish social and economic historians,
and M. Verdon’s atomistic perspective on European living
arrangements have been taken as the points of reference for
the empirical investigation. The evidence on household struc-
ture makes evident that a pattern considered as typical for
the East-European Slavs and Balkans can not be attributed
to the places we study. An analysis of developmental cycles
of domestic groups demonstrated that non-inheriting male
offspring in the parishes usually searched for residential
autonomy. Co-residence of younger generations with par-
ents and other kin took place on exceptional occasions and
was usually temporary. This has been accompanied by a
gradual departure of children of both sexes from parental
households. Although there was a significant proportion of
stem families in the villages, they seem to be a sort of life-
cycle phenomenon. The residential patterns of elderly peo-
ple revealed striking differences in the importance of the fa-
∗ Address all communications to: Mikołaj Szołtysek, Institute of History, Pomeranian Peda-
gogical Academy, ul. Arciszewskiego 22A, 76-200 Słupsk, Poland; E-mail address:
soltis@poczta.onet.pl; Konrad Rzemieniecki, Institute of History, Department of Historical
Demography and Economic History, University of Wrocław, ul. Szewska 49, 50-139 Wro-
cław, Poland; E-mail address: rzemieniecki@interia.pl.
131
mily as a welfare institution between villages. Another fea-
ture of the relationship patterns in the localities was the in-
cidence of co-residence with non-relatives, mostly occur-
ring during the teenage years and early adulthood. All in all,
the study revealed a considerable complexity and diversity
of individual behaviours but a relative lack of “family-cen-
tred principles” in household arrangements in the parishes.
Introduction
During his long trip from Prussia into Poland, Segur, an 18th century French
traveller, has written a passage that gives an image of his impressions in a very
expressive way:
“In traversing the eastern parts of the estates of the king of Prussia, it seems
that one leaves the theatre where there reigns a nature embellished by the ef-
forts of art and a perfect civilisation. The eye is already saddened by arid
sands, by vast forests.
But when one enters Poland, one believes one has left Europe entirely, and the
gaze is struck by a new spectacle: an immense country almost totally covered
with fit trees always green, but always sad, interrupted at long intervals by
some cultivated plans, like islands scattered on the ocean; a poor population,
enslaved; dirty villages; cottages little different from the savage huts; every-
thing makes one think one has been moved back ten centuries, and that one
finds oneself amid hordes of Huns, Scythians, Veneti, Slavs and Sarmatians”
(Wolff 1994, p. 19).
One may be tempted to search for analogies and argue that such a perspec-
tive on Eastern Europe—as an entity lying somewhere “in-between”, on the
borderland area between civilised West and barbarian East—was not entirely
absent from modern demographic thought as well (Greenhalgh 1996; Todorova
1997). A similar metaphor of a movement from “the centre” to “the periphery”
one can easily find in the most prominent works on the history of European
family. John Hajnal has been most influential in doing so when he proposed a
demarcation line from St Petersburg to Trieste, running right through Central
Europe and dividing the continent into two zones of sharply contrasted family
systems (Hajnal 1965; 1982, pp. 452-453). Quite recently Michael Mitterauer
and Karl Kaser—both following Hajnal’s reasoning—argued that there really
was a transitional cultural zone between west and east European family pat-
terns spreading eastward alongside the extent of medieval German colonization
movement in East-Central Europe (Mitterauer 2003; Kaser 2001, p. 57)1.
1 On the criticism of Mitterauer’s and Kaser’s propositions see Szołtysek 2005b.
132
No doubt, the debate on Hajnal’s division of pre-industrial Europe has re-
cently lost part of its analytical vitality (Wall 1997, 1998). However, there are
several assumptions underlying the concept of two household formation sys-
tems, which seem still to possess an important heuristic value, especially when
taken as a starting point for discussing intra-familial relationships in the Euro-
pean past. They all have been expressed directly or indirectly in the vast area of
historical-demographic literature (Wall 1998; Laslett 1983; 1988; Mitterauer
2003; Kaser 2001, 2002; Schofield 1989; Das Gupta 1999; Skinner 1997).
Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to present them in a somewhat stylised ver-
sion alongside individualistic vs. collectivistic assumptions (Verdon 1998)2.
According to this, West European household arrangements were predomi-
nated by neo-local rules of residence that “lay it down that every person when
marrying has to leave the parental household and join in the formation of a new
one” (Laslett 1988, p. 153). The very concept of neo-locality implied presump-
tion of “loose” kin relations and organization of kinsfolk that was rather not
family-centred. It also implied the existence of the so-called nuclear hardship,
which refers in general to particular “difficulties imposed upon individuals
when social rules require them to live in nuclear households” (ibid.). Life-cycle
service, existence of land market together with forms of non-agrarian employ-
ment and collective provisions for socially weak, these all have made for main-
taining the system based on the principle of residential autonomy. This was a
sort of a “lifeboat ethic”, whereby “the social and economic position of the
family was effectively maintained by removing or highly circumscribing the
potential claims of other kin to support from the household” (Das Gupta 1999,
p. 4). At the same time, the prevalence of nuclear households was usually seen
as resulting from the penetration of capitalism and its individualistic set of
values (esp. Macfarlane 1978).
On the contrary, the discourse on the European East (as well as on “back-
ward” areas of Pyrenean and Mediterranean) operates predominantly within a
collectivistic milieu. East European (more) complex households have often
been considered as an outcome of a “peculiar” cultural setting as expressed in
coercive institutions or norms (Verdon 1998, p. 4). Even when economic fac-
tors were called upon in order to explain a patterned behaviour, scholars usu-
ally accounted for its existence by invoking a set of norms or values making
2 Certainly, such a stylised approach ignores the actual variation on the ground of operation
of family systems that could exist both between regions and different socio-economic
groups within the same region. In addition to these forms of variation being ignored, such
approach does not consider the fact that systems could have changed over time. We use the
term “collectivistic” in a different and rather narrower sense than it has been done by Las-
lett in his exploration of the role of community (the parish, town or village community) in
sustaining the family system based on nuclear households in Northwest Europe (Laslett
1988, p. 156). Here, we refer mainly to family-based principles of social organization and
to one of their manifestations—family-centered residence patterns (comp. Wall 1998).
133
this practice possible. At the core of the problem—as for example Macfarlane’s
argument goes—lies the corporate nature of the ownership lacking any individ-
ual rights over property (Macfarlane 1978, pp. 20-23; or what Das Gupta 1999,
p. 5 termed “corporate ethic”) and leading to family-based principles of social
organization. Such an image has been also reinforced by the stress that had
been often put on particular propensities of the Slavic way of life. That applies
to the case of Russian peasants who have been considered as having developed
a strongly collectivistic culture, a collectivism that sustained their large house-
holds. However, this concerns also Polish speaking populations, for in the
international historical and sociological literature, Polish family forms have
often been portrayed as rooted in the Slavic tendency to follow a communal
way of life (Sering 1934; Thomas and Znaniecki 1958 [1918]; Macfarlane
1978, pp. 18-30).
The general aim of this paper is to make an attempt to test how far that di-
chotomous picture holds true. In order to do this we will analyse various as-
pects of household characteristics for the sample of three parishes lying on the
borderland area astride the Hajnal line, using the procedures popularised in the
research done by the Cambridge Group and its followers (Laslett and Wall
1972; Wall 1998). All the parishes under study were inhabited solely by Polish-
speaking serf population. The sample diverges in a way that two of them (Będ-
ków and Piątek) were located in the eastern part of the region called Great
Poland and belonged to the Polish Kingdom, while the third one (Bujakow)
formed a parish within Kreis Beuthen of the Kingdom of Prussia3. However, in
all of them marriage and household formation of the peasants were, in princi-
ple, under strict manorial control since peasants had only limited property
rights under the rule of insecure land tenure (Orzechowski 1959; Baranowski
1971; Woźniak 1987).4
The population of the parish Bujakow occupied three villages and was rather
stable in the period under study. Some 750 inhabitants were counted in 1766,
while 830 inhabitants after thirty years (underregistered children included). The
3 By Great Poland we are denoting a district on the western fringes of both historical and
today’s Polish territories (called Wielkopolska). More on the demographic characteristic of
the parish of Bujakow: Szołtysek 2004a, 2004c. Also there, the detailed elaboration of the
distribution of servants, lodgers and kin among households in parochial villages.
4 Direct information on the nature of peasant proprietorship is only available for the parish of
Bujakow. There, the peasants’ rights over their land were called lassitischer Besitz. It has
been defined as “a form of peasant’s ownership concerning the termless right to use the
landowner’s holdings, buildings and the whole inventory, however, without the perfect
right to deal with them” (Orzechowski 1959, p. 43). This form of insecure land tenure
obliged serfs to several duties in favor of the estate owner, especially to do the Frondienste
(corvee). The rules implied also the impartibility of holdings, landowners’ right to interfere
in the process of transmission and their right to expel a peasant family from the holding. As
a matter of fact, however, feudal practices could have often been much more flexible in
several aspects (Szołtysek 2004c).
134
parish Będków contained the small town of the same name with 478 inhabi-
tants and eight villages with the total population of 573 inhabitants. The parish
of Piątek was the largest one in the sample: besides the town Piątek it contained
eighteen villages, and it reached the number of 2721 Christian and 167 Jewish
inhabitants altogether.5
This work has been based on two different sets of household lists. One con-
sists of 15 sequential census-type “communion books” listing all inhabitants
above the age 11 by households for the period from 1766 to 1803 in the parish
of Bujakow and supplemented by existing parish registers6. The second one
contains single household counts (so called Libri status animarum) from two
localities in 1791, listing all inhabitants together with their age specification7.
5 In both cases from Great Poland the population estimates include the inhabitants of manor
houses. For the purpose of the statistical analysis, only the rural population of Great Poland
parishes has been used.
6 The title of the original is: No. 4. Communicanten Register der Kirche zu Bujakow aus dem
Gross Dubenster Archypresbyteral Kreis siehe den 5. des Reglements, A.D. 1766. The
source was found in the church archive in Bujakow. “Communion books” raise some meth-
odological problems, such as the fact that the source designates no ages of the household
members. Secondly, particular domestic groups have not been enumerated but only segre-
gated in separate “blocks” (see the discussion of that issue in Berkner 1975). Therefore, the
identification of the household units in successive censuses was carried out through a care-
ful observation of the group of individuals within each “block” from one enumeration to
another with regard to several criteria, such as continuity of their names and surnames, kin
relationships and social statuses. Household heads who appeared in subsequent censuses
have been assumed to be the same person or/and to represent the same domestic group
when: 1) they had the same names and surnames while according to the parish registers the
possibility of the existence of persons with the same ones in the community was ruled out;
2) they had different names but the same surnames, and according to parish registers there
was a close kinship relation between the two owners that had additionally been accompa-
nied by co-residence of members of the previous domestic group (parent/s, sibling/s); 3)
they had different names and surnames but there was an evidence suggesting headship
transmission from father to son-in-law, to the second husband of a deceased head’s wife, or
another form of reconstructed transfer (e.g.: we have assumed that the household of Zofia
Kornas, widowed Gärtnerin from 1768, had its continuation in the household of Gärtner
Mathias Zajac—the owner who appeared in the source for the first time in the enumeration
of 1769—in which she was a lodger in 1769). No way to escape these pitfalls, we have
taken for granted that people assigned to particular “block” constituted the household as an
residential unit, typically merging productive and consumptive functions. Such a household
not only contained the head’s immediate family, but also servants, retired parents or other
co-resided kin, as well as lodgers (however, with regards to the latter we have assumed they
had formed separate household units even within the same premises).
7 Archival reference numbers for the lists from Great Poland are: for the parish of Piątek—
Lwowska Biblioteka Naukowa Akadamii Nauk Ukrainy, Odział Rękopisów, Teki Czołow-
skiego, rkps 1628/II; for the parish of Będków—Lwowska Biblioteka Naukowa Akademii
Nauk Ukrainy, Odział Rękopisów, Teki Czołowskiego, rkps 1583/III.
In both Silesian and Great Polish household lists these have been the local priests that had
conducted the enumerations of the villages’ inhabitants by households. The household lists
from the Great Poland parishes represent attempts that have been made to register the popu-
lation of hundreds of local communities due to the decision of so-called Great Parliament of
135
Despite general similarities and usefulness to study household structure, these
sources differ in several aspects, requiring different questions to be asked as
well as methods to be applied.
Before proceeding further, a brief outline of our own assumptions used to
operationalise the research and to put forward some hypotheses is necessary.
Following Michel Verdon’s atomistic perspective on European living arrange-
ments (Verdon 1998), we assume that European households regardless of their
geographical location will spontaneously tend to nuclearise, if unhindered. This
is so—as Verdon has pointed out—because “(...) all adults normally constituted
psychologically appear to want to decide the course of their everyday life. They
may be unable to do so and resign themselves to their fate but, given any
choice, they will choose independence, and resent being told what to do, even
if they need to consult others to make up their own mind” (ibid., p. 53). We
believe Verdon was right in saying that in the European context, cohabitation
of two or more conjugal units within the household was intrinsically conflictual
(ibid., p. 62; see also Segalen 1984; Collomp 1984). Thus, the co-residence of
two or more of them needs to be explained in terms of hindrances or coercive
forces or both (Verdon, pp. 20-21).
A secondary frame of reference has also been built into our research. In their
model of “second serfdom”, Witold Kula and Andrzej Woźniak have described
the inter-relationships between peasant households and landowners in central
Poland (Kula 1983; Woźniak 1987). As a general theoretical construct we as-
sume this model to be applicable both to 18th century Silesia as well as to Great
Poland of the same time.
In contrast to the collectivist image of the Polish peasants, one can hardly
find collectivistic assumptions in the works of Kula and Woźniak. Both authors
take notice of landlords’ efforts to separate co-residing couples of different or
the same generation in order to multiply the number of familial units. These
peasant families should be capable of cultivating independently a certain
amount of (free) land and performing several duties in favour of the domain at
the same time (Kula 1983, p. 244; Woźniak 1987; also Rutkowski 1956 and
Kochanowicz 1983, p. 162). If we look at the matter through Verdon’s atom-
istic perspective, this seems like a particular case of institutional incentive to
neo-local practices: few hindrances and constraints were imposed on individual
aspiration towards residential autonomy. This seemed to be general knowledge
the Kingdom of Poland, 1788-1792. For the detailed evaluation of the Silesian and Great
Poland source materials, see Szołtysek 2003, 2004b, 2004c and Rzemieniecki 2005, 2004b.
Liber status animarum from the parish of Piątek is far from being complete for it covered
only 1118 people from the total number of 2721 inhabitants. The reason for that was the
complete omission of seven of the parochial villages and partial omission of another two
localities, including the town in the enumeration (Rzemieniecki 2005). In this analysis the
total number of 965 inhabitants has been used for estimations.
136
even to contemporary observers, for one can easily find descriptions similar to
that coming from 1767:
“A serf, having no more property besides the clothes he gained while being in
servitude, is usually forced to take over a holding together with an acreage just
after his marriage” (“Monitor” 1767; quoted from Woźniak 1987, p. 108;
translation by M. Szołtysek).
But in contrast to Verdon’s view, both Kula and Woźniak pointed out that
peasants were quite reluctant to this neo-local practice from above. Instead,
they preferred co-residence (Kula 1983, p. 244; Woźniak 1987, p. 91). Kula
was far from being clear in explaining this phenomenon. However, one can
mention Kochanowicz who argued that peasants tried to keep and cumulate
family labour force within the household in addition to non-family labour in
order to use the former to cultivate their own holdings and the latter to perform
the corvee (Kochanowicz 1983, p. 159-162; also Zawistowicz-Adamska 1971;
Topolski 1956).
Woźniak looked at the issue from a different angle. He was much more ex-
plicit in emphasising several hindrances and constraints that would have been
imposed on the new owner and would have made him certainly not optimistic
with respect to the prospects of his household’s prosperity. These were: a great
welfare burden to carry for a new household due to the insufficiency of family
labour manpower at the beginning of its developmental cycle and due to high
costs of hiring servants; bad quality of free wastelands that might not have been
cultivated for a long time; agricultural equipment not complete and often re-
duced by landlords to rudimentary hardware, by that making land cultivation a
tremendous effort; and, last but not least, several additional obligations such as
repairs of agricultural premises on one’s own (Woźniak 1987, p. 93-94). In
other words, the second serfdom made nuclear hardship harder.
However, manor houses could use countervailing strategies to encourage
neo-local household formation. In such cases, a sort of domain’s relief has been
brought into force by allocating to peasants not only plots of land, but also all
the premises as well as grains for the sowing (Woźniak 1987, p. 93-94). There
could have also been additional incentives at work. Landlords could reduce a
young couple’s work burden by including the couple into a lower category of
rural population and reducing its obligations to the corresponding kind of cor-
vee without work animals although the couple had been provided with large
amount of land, such as Hufen (włóka or rola) (Woźniak 1987, p. 94).
It is clear then, that even within the model we describe peasants’ unwilling-
ness towards residential autonomy is no indicator of any particular set of values
or general norms, beliefs and ethos (comp. Verdon 1998, pp. 22-23). Instead,
we have the operation of two antithetic forces with respect to residential auton-
omy: lack of institutional hindrances (since landlords tried to maximise the
number of profitable plots of land), and economic hardship for the individual
peasant family (sharpened by the impartibility of land).
137
Living Together, Living Apart
Tables 1 to 3 show us general patterns of household arrangements in the parish
of Bujakow, using Laslett’s classification scheme (Laslett 1972, pp. 28-31).
The results are based on simple cross-tabulations, nevertheless they seem to be
meaningful, for what we see is a relatively large percentage of extended and
multiple family forms. These could range from less than 10% to even more
than half of all households in one village through all the period covered by the
household lists, giving an average of 27% of extended and multiple households
for the whole period.
Table 1: Households by structure according to Laslett’s typology—the vil-
lage of Bujakow, 1766-1803.
Percentage of household types:
Year
Overall
number of
households
(100%) 1a-1b 2a-2c
3a-3d
(nuc-
lear)
4a-4d
(exten-
ded)
5a-5e
(multiple)
4-5
alto-
gether
1766 53 3.8 – 81.1 11.3 3.8 15.1
1767 53 3.8 1.9 81.1 9.4 3.8 13.2
1768 54 1.9 – 87.0 7.4 3.7 11.1
1769 50 4.0 – 84.0 6.0 6.0 12.0
1770 50 4.0 – 80.0 6.0 10.0 16.0
1785 42 – 4.8 85.7 4.8 4.8 9.5
1786 59 – 1.7 72.9 16.9 8.5 25.4
1792 61 3.3 – 68.9 21.3 6.6 27.9
1793 65 3.1 – 66.2 24.6 6.2 30.8
1794 63 3.2 – 76.2 14.3 6.3 20.6
1795 63 4.8 1.6 73.0 14.3 6.3 20.6
1796 60 1.7 1.7 75.0 18.3 3.3 21.7
1801 54 – 1.9 77.8 13.0 7.4 20.4
1802 63 – 4.8 74.6 12.7 7.9 20.6
1803 56 1.8 7.1 73.2 7.1 10.7 17.9
Source: Communicanten Register der Kirche zu Bujakow.
138
Table 2: Households by structure according to Laslett’s typology—the vil-
lage of Klein Paniow, 1766-1803.
Percentage of household types:
Year
Overall
number of
households
(100%) 1a-1b 2a-2c 3a-3d
(nuclear)
4a-4d
(extended)
5a-5e
(multiple)
4-5
alto-
gether
1766 43 2.3 4.7 60.5 18.6 14.0 32.6
1767 45 2.2 4.4 57.8 22.2 13.3 35.6
1768 41 – 2.4 63.4 19.5 14.6 34.1
1769 42 – 2.4 64.3 23.8 9.5 33.3
1770 43 – 2.3 67.4 25.6 4.7 30.2
1785 46 – 4.3 69.6 17.4 8.7 26.1
1786 47 4.3 4.3 61.7 17.0 12.8 29.8
1792 51 – 2.0 54.9 25.5 17.6 43.1
1793 45 – 2.2 46.7 31.1 20.0 51.1
1794 50 – 2.0 64.0 16.0 18.0 34.0
1795 51 2.0 – 66.7 19.6 11.8 31.4
1796 47 – – 53.2 27.7 19.1 46.8
1801 49 – – 53.1 26.5 20.4 46.9
1803 50 – – 54.0 30.0 16.0 46.0
Source: Communicanten Register der Kirche zu Bujakow.
139
Table 3: Households by structure according to Laslett’s typology—the vil-
lage of Gross Paniow, 1766-1802.
The percentage of household types:
Year
The overall
number of
households
(100%) 2a-2c 3a-3d
(nuclear)
4a-4d
(extended)
5a-5e
(multiple)
4-5
altogether
1766 54 5.6 66.7 20.4 7.4 27.8
1767 52 5.8 65.4 21.2 7.7 28.8
1768 51 3.9 64.7 23.5 7.8 31.4
1769 51 2.0 72.5 21.6 3.9 25.5
1770 50 2.0 74.0 20.0 4.0 24.0
1785 50 – 88.0 8.0 4.0 12.0
1786 51 – 86.3 7.8 5.9 13.7
1792 54 – 59.3 24.1 16.7 40.7
1793 54 1.9 66.7 20.4 11.1 31.5
1794 55 1.8 76.4 14.5 7.3 21.8
1795 56 1.8 80.4 10.7 7.1 17.9
1796 56 – 76.8 14.3 8.9 23.2
1801 52 – 76.9 17.3 5.8 23.1
1802 38 2.6 73.7 15.8 7.9 23.7
Source: Communicanten Register der Kirche zu Bujakow.
A glance at the household typology from the two communities of Great Po-
land gives us a relatively similar impression (tables 4 and 5). The total percent-
age of the households of Laslett’s types 4 and 5 in the parish of Będków
reached almost 40% of the whole sample and almost 30% in Piątek. These data
seem to show family and household patterns rather different from the “unique”
northwest European model, as well as from peasants’ reluctance towards co-
residence described by Kula and Woźniak. Thus, two questions arise: (1) Were
these communities family-centred ones, as this simple statistics might suggest?
(2) What factors were responsible for a significant proportion of couples from
the communities deciding to co-reside, while the rest has been able to form its
own households?
140
Table 4: Households by struc-
ture according to Laslett’s typol-
ogy—the parish of Będków, 1791.
Type of
household
structure
Absolute
numbers %
3a 2
3b 45
3
3d 4
51 61,4
4a 6
4b 3
4c 7
4
4d 4
20 24,1
5b 6
5c 2
5
5d 4
12 14,5
Totals 83 100
Source: Libri status animarum
of the parish of Będków.
Table 5: Households by struc-
ture according to Laslett’s typol-
ogy—the parish of Piątek, 1791.
Type of house-
hold structure
Absolute
numbers %
3a 7
3b 80
3c 1
3d 3
3
3e 1
92 73,6
4a 7
4b 6
4c 7
4
4d 8
28 22,4
5a 3
5 5b 2 5 4
Totals 125 100
Source: Libri status animarum of
the parish of Piątek.
In order to make the first step in approaching the problem, a more detailed
investigation into households’ characteristics is necessary. First, one should not
overlook differences between villages, and fluctuations over time in households’
complexity within the three Upper Silesian localities. Within the villages of the
parish of Bujakow extended households were usually twice more numerous as
multiple ones. This holds true for Będków as well, while in the third locality
one can find extended households four times more numerous than multiple
ones8. Furthermore, married brothers in Bujakow formed a household together
8 The present stage of the investigation does not allow to state clearly whether this phenome-
non stemmed from the interaction with demographic determinants or had something to do
with prevailing inheritance patterns. At least some of the extended households could have
potentially resulted not from formerly existing multigenerational constellations—impossi-
141
only in exceptional cases. On the other hand stem families constituted there
65% of all complex households, and they might have even averaged 30% of all
households in one village9. This is even more striking among the Great Poland
communities: in Piątek married brothers headed none of the 125 households in
1791, while in Będków the maximum frequency of frérèche in the total number
of households did not exceed half a percent. This evidence warns us not to
establish the dominant family forms too eagerly for the whole sample, but at
the same time it makes evident that a pattern considered as typical for the East-
European Slavs and Balkans can not be attributed to the places we study.
Serial census accounts as those we had at our disposal for the parish of Bu-
jakow were especially suitable to follow the changes that occurred within fam-
ily composition during its developmental cycle (Berkner 1972, 1975; Mitterau-
er and Sieder 1983; Janssens 1993; Leboutte 1998). Thus, it was possible for us
to gain some insights into the very nature of intra-familiar relationships in this
community through analysing individual and family life-cycles.
Let us start with the developmental cycle of one of the domestic groups
from Klein Paniow (diagram 1). The oldest son (no. 1) left the parental farm
after his marriage at the age of 27 and established an independent household as
the owner of the village inn. His younger brother (no. 2) stayed with the parents
and brought his wife into parental household four years later. However, after
next four years the young couple also moved out to an independent household.
The old farmer was in charge of headship till 1799, when the fourth and the
youngest son (no. 6) took over the farm after he had got married at the age of
22. The fate of the third son (no. 5) was different: he left the parental farm at
the age of 17, but stayed as bachelor and servant on his oldest brother’s farm
until the age of 28. He got married at the age of 30.
ble to capture by the use of single household accounts—but rather from originally neo-loca-
lised households extended by the inclusion of a widowed parent later on.
9 Here, by stem families we mean households that fitted into one of the Laslett’s types: 5a
(co-residence with parents of the household head or parents of his wife), two co-resided
conjugal units with older generation heading the household (5b), extended upwards (his or
her widowed parent), and 4d.
142
Diagram 1
143
Diagram 2
Now consider the household of the Gross Paniow blacksmith who also had
some plots of land (diagram 2). Three of his four sons reached adulthood. The
oldest son (no. 1) established his own household along with his marriage at the
age of 32. The family farm was then taken over by the 34 years-old second son
(no. 3) just one year after the father’s death. The youngest brother (no. 4) got
married with the heiress of a smallholding as a man of 28 years and left the
parental household.
Cases like these could be multiplied. They all demonstrate that non-inherit-
ing male offspring in the Silesian parish searched for residential autonomy. They
also resemble the mechanism that Das Gupta termed a “lifeboat ethic”, main-
taining the family by removing claims of other kin (Das Gupta 1999, p. 4). In
cases when ultimogeniture took place, sometimes two or even three older sons
had to leave the family home at marriage or just after it to set up new house-
144
holds or they went into service, before the family head finally decided to hand
over the headship to the youngest son. Sometimes, those who were leaving the
parental farm might stay on it with their brides for shorter or longer time, what
constituted the multiple households. However, it seems that even in those cases
the principle of searching for residential autonomy was at work. Two additional
cycles reveal this mechanism even better.
Regard four lines of the family Szydlowski from the village of Bujakow
(diagram 3). At the beginning of the observation we find the family household
just after the supposed departure of the two oldest sons, one of them was Mar-
tin holding an independent Gärtnerstelle (no. 2). Just after the death of the
Hausvater the headship had been transmitted to the youngest daughter (no. 9)
and her newly married husband. Remarkably, both younger brothers did not
stay long in the household headed by the sister’s family, and both left it at their
marriage. One of the brothers (no. 11), together with his family, spent 8 years
as a lodger joining several households in the village. Another one (no. 10) has
reached his own Stelle after at least five years of being soldier and lodger in his
sister’s household.
The case of another family from the parish is even more instructive (dia-
gram 4). In 1766, the family household contained two conjugal units co-resid-
ing since the marriage of the head’s supposed son (no. 2) in 1764. This pattern
of residence that resembles classic stem family arrangements, however, had no-
thing to do with the strategy of property’s devolution. Through all these years
of cohabitation, the head’s son has been listed as soldier—which meant he was
not allowed to posses a landed property within the prevailing system of lassi-
tischer Besitz. However, this fact did not hinder him to have children every two
years. Just after finishing the military service he left the parental household
moving to a Häusler- and then Gärtnerstelle somewhere in the village together
with his wife and son. Twenty years later this household was handed over to
daughter Anna (no. 5), while the son (no. 4) followed a similar path as his
father: together with his wife he joined his cousin’s household for a while, but
finally he found an opportunity to settle on his own.
145
Diagram 3
146
Diagram 4
147
Diagram 5
Whether they consciously headed for living on their own, or were coerced to
do so by external constraints (or both), a significant part of the young genera-
tion in Bujakow gained residential autonomy. Either they headed their own
households, or they rented a room or a part of premises as lodgers from people
to whom they were not related through kinship. However, it seems that for
some of them parental household or family of other immediate kin might have
served as a temporary shelter during their road to independence or in cases of
economic or demographic hardships. Nevertheless, the evidence at hand sug-
148
gested that couples usually entered into co-residence on exceptional occasions,
and for a significant part of the younger generation co-residence with parents or
siblings was only temporary (see diagram 5)10.
Supportive evidence for a similar process one can also find in both localities
from Great Poland. Here, children of both sexes gradually departed from paren-
tal households after they had attained the age of 9 (figures 1-4). In both com-
munities, female offspring experienced the most abrupt form of the process:
there were no more than 7% of girls over the age of 19 present in parental
households, when compared to the number of daughters aged 5 to 9. In both
communities, the number of male offspring over the age of 19 within house-
holds dropped by almost 70% compared to the age group 5 to 9. In both the
percentage of male offspring over the age of 25 was very low. However, in the
first parish (Będków) it was the age of 9, and then again the age of 19, that
marked the departure of the largest proportion of male progeny from parental
households, while in the second community the largest loss within the group
occurred after the 14th birthday. However imperfect that measure may be (see
Wall 1987, pp. 90-92; Dribe 2000, pp. 8-12), these results bring about a proof
of behaviours certainly not very far from Northwest European experience
(Wall, passim)11.
Last but not least, one should not loose sight of those who decided for co-
residence with an older generation. In Bujakow, those who stayed on the paren-
tal farm often formed the classic stem family arrangements before taking over
the household. This involved: stable family composition preceding the transfer;
the presence of the future heir and his bride who lived with his or her parents
still governing the household; and the prevalence of a intervivos type of trans-
mission with the older generation retiring.
10 Birth order of the head’s children was: daughter (no 1), son (no. 2) and daughter again (no.
3), while all of them have reached the adulthood. After death of the wife in 1776, the old
household head did not remarry. Between 1786 and 1790 he handed over the farm to his
youngest child (no. 3), the already married daughter and her husband. Surprisingly, the 33
years old son (no. 2) married the widowed owner of the large holding in the village almost
at the same time. Unfortunately, in the enumeration of 1792 we find him with his wife, to-
gether with his father, as lodgers in the household headed by his distant relatives, what sug-
gests the failure of the son’s in-marrying strategy. In the future, the disinherited son to-
gether with his wife will join the household of his married sister as lodgers twice, in 1793
and 1796. They disappeared from the parish after that.
11 These measures are based on synthetic cohorts and do not control for any effects of mortality.
149
Figure 1
Leaving home process―B
ę
dków, 1791
(
males
only)
100
12
68 60
20
0
20
40
60
80
100
5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25>
Age groups
Percentage of children at
home
Figure 2
Leaving home process―Będków, 1791 (females
only)
87
0
3
31
100
0
20
40
60
80
100
5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25>
Age groups
Percentage of children at
home
150
Figure 3
Leaving home process―Piątek, 1791 (males only)
86
9,3
100
33
21
0
20
40
60
80
100
5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25>
Age groups
Percentage of children at
home
Figure 4
Leaving home process―Pi
ą
tek, 1791
(
females
only)
89
100
39
70
0
20
40
60
80
100
5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25>
Age groups
Percentage of children at
home
However, the stem family in Bujakow seems to be a sort of life-cycle phe-
nomenon. An individual in that parish experienced household complexity usu-
ally at two points of his life: in the marrying phase when he usually brought his
wife into the parental household, and in older age when his son got married but
remained at home (on this pattern also Kaser 2001, p. 44 and Fauve-Chamoux
1996, p. 81). In fact, there were some households which did not experience the
nuclear phase for the most part of their cycles, although there was only one not
151
experiencing it at all. However, none of these households kept the classic stem
family arrangements during all census takings.
Looking at the figures 5 and 6, one can also find slightly similar tendency at
least in the parish of Będków. There, extended family households were numer-
ous among the household heads at the age of 20 to 39, while multiple house-
holds occurred mostly among those over 50 years.
Figure 5
No. of cases = 83
Figure 6
No. of cases = 125
Household com position by the age of hous ehold hea d -
Będków, 1791
0
2
4
6
20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-59 60-
Age groups
Absolute
numbers
Multiple Extended
Household composition by the age of household
head - Piątek, 1791
0
5
10
15
20-
24
25-
29
30-
34
35-
39
40-
44
45-
49
50-
54
55-
59
60-
Age groups
Absolute
numbers
Extended Multiple
152
What then if not a Family Household? Contexts:
Hindrances and Coercion in Residential Arrangements
As we have seen, in all localities a large proportion of the younger generation
achieved residential autonomy, even if some of them experienced household
complexity at some points of their life-cycles. However, there was also a sig-
nificant number of those who took co-residence with an older generation as an
option, being compelled to do so or not. Thus, now we have to approach the
problem of these different attitudes towards leaving home and achieving inde-
pendence. Doing so, we consider stem family rules as intrinsically conflictual.
Following Verdon, we argue that within them the only heir will likely have
conflictual relationships with his male siblings, as he does with the father who
“stands in the way of his heir’s economic autonomy until he (the father) dies or
is incapacitated by old age” (Verdon 1998, p. 58). Thus, it seems reasonable for
us to go along with Verdon who points out that conjugal units “(…) may either
be hindered from achieving autonomy because of mostly economic reasons, but
they can also be coerced into co-residence because of the ‘force’ exerted on
them by another couple or extra-residential power-holders” (ibid., p. 63). When
parents succeed in compelling married children into cohabitation, they do so
because children are hindered economically because of the absence of viable
economic options or no real economic alternative (ibid., pp. 63-64).
The evidence at hand makes it possible to reveal both the incentives to
achieve residential autonomy as well as the disincentives to co-residence with
the older generation on the part of the young generation. At the same time, it
makes viable the explanation of behaviour of those of them who have chosen
living together.
Movers
Among the factors that could have been working as disincentives to household
co-residence of different generations in the parishes, the following should be
mentioned. Firstly, in all communities, rules of impartible transmission of the
farm acted for a lot of the male progeny as the most powerful incentive to
search for residential autonomy outside the family household12. Furthermore, in
all of them household headship seemed to be a remarkably stable office, de-
creasing young male’s chances to achieve it at a reasonable age, and therefore
12 This seems particularly evident in Bujakow where the rules of lassitischer Besitz implied
that one heir took over the farmstead together with the house ground, and paid off the rest
of heirs, usually at their marriage (Orzechowski 1959; see also Ehmer 1998, p. 61; Plakans
1975; Woźniak 1987).
153
encouraging them to move out. In Bujakow, once attained, headship lasted on
average between 18 and 21 years. Nonetheless, one may easily find some cases
in which it has been wielded for 30 or even 40 years in the parish (for the latter:
4 cases). On average, men stepped down from headship in their early sixties
(Szołtysek 2004c, p. 72). Furthermore, among 113 transfers of headship that
took place within the parochial villages between 1766 and 1803 and for which
it was possible to reveal the context of transmissions, only 37% have concerned
the intervivos type of intergeneration interchange. The rest of them occurred
when the previous household head died (Szołtysek 2003, p. 276)13.
Figure 7
Total no of. cases = 243
Population of manor houses excluded.
Factors that were probably not conducive to early accession to headship of-
fice seemed to have existed in the parishes from Great Poland as well. In Będ-
ków, only slightly more than 10% of all household heads registered in 1791
were below 30. Within the age group 20 to 29 a quarter of all males registered
13 However, the precise impact of mortality that could have acted as a kind of “positive
check” affecting inheritance practices should be further elaborated.
Position in the household by age—males only, the parish of
Będków 1791
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
0-4
5--9
10--14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-
Age groups
Percentage of persons within age groups
Children Servants Household heads Co-resided kin Lodgers
154
in the village has already gained headship, while the rest of them were co-
residing children or kin as well as servants in husbandry (figure 7) (also
Rzemieniecki 2004a). In Piątek the conditions were even worse, for only 11%
of all males between 20 to 34 years old registered in 1791 headed their own
households, while the rest of them was working mostly as rural servants. This
is even more transparent after considering that of all the males in the age group
25 to 29 years within this parish, only less than 7% were in charge of their own
households at the time of census taking (figure 8).
Figure 8
Total no. of cases = 408
Population of manor houses excluded.
We lack any direct information on the distribution of authority within the
households we have investigated. Still, we assume that cohabitation of two
couples according to stem family rules, but with the older generation heading
the household, typically led to a subordination of the younger couple. It seems
plausible, then, to argue that the younger the adult members of the secondary
unit within a household, the more easily they could be kept in a subordinate
position. All the features mentioned so far could have worked as relatively
strong disincentives to household co-residence of different generations in the
three communities we have studied.
Position in the household by age—males only, the parish of
Piątek 1791
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
0-4
5--9
10--14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-
Age groups
Percentage of persons within age
groups
Children Household heads Servants Co-resided kin Lodgers
155
These assumptions seem to be accredited by the prevalence of ultimogeni-
ture in Bujakow and by large age differences between generations having their
own families but living together in multiple households in Będków. In all vil-
lages of the Bujakow parish but one, the number of multiple families (total no.
of cases = 203) with older generation still governing the household exceeded
those in which it was the younger generation that was in charge of the headship
(Szołtysek 2004b, pp. 46-47). All multiple households with secondary units
lineal in Będków were ruled over by older generation14.
Several socio-economic characteristics of the communities may have
worked to create viable economic options and to make young people less prone
to form multigenerational households. We can start presenting them by point-
ing out that in all the communities under study a relatively extended labour
market existed. On average, approximately 13% of the total Bujakow popula-
tion were servants in peasants’ households. Servants working for the manor
houses supplemented this group. They formed less than 40% of all servants in
the villages and were mainly composed of women. However, there was a con-
stant flow between these two groups, with the large part of peasants’ servants
working on the manors for shorter or longer time.
A similar situation was in the rural part of Great Poland parishes we have
studied. There, servants formed 17% of the village population counted together
with manor houses, with the husbandry dominated almost solely by males and
manor houses making use of the most of female labour force.
It is evident that in all communities service was usually not a life-long con-
dition, but a phase in the life-cycle. This life-cycle service seemed to be posi-
tively correlated with the probability of achieving residential autonomy in
Bujakow, in some way or another. Most servants recorded in one census were
in a different position later. Basically, there were three alternatives. A part of
the servants eventually came to own a holding, either through inheritance or
through marriage. More servants could found a family of their own, although
they had no access to landed property; they became lodgers. Others disap-
peared from parochial registration after a few years, which means they proba-
bly had emigrated. Many servants worked in several households during this
phase, some returned to the same household later again, but rarely did they
come back to their parental home (Szołtysek 2004b, pp. 26-27, 56; on this
pattern see also Mitterauer 2003, p. 42). In Piątek, more than 70% of the male
14 It should be stressed again that it is not possible to judge on the basis of single household
lists whether the composition of households of Laslett’s type 4a have been the result of pre-
vious cohabitation of younger and older generation (with the first being in charge of the
household headship) or whether it has emerged as a consequence of the death of previous
household head and subsequent transmission of headship to young successor. Nevertheless,
even the percentage of domestic groups of this type in the overall number of extended
households in both communities from Great Poland seems to be relatively low (it did not
exceed 30% in Będków and 25% in Piątek).
156
population and 37% of females aged 20 to 34 were servants in peasant house-
holds or at manor houses. The numbers for Będków were slightly lower and
amounted respectively 35 and 15%.
Concerning both population and the number of large farms, the parish of
Bujakow remained virtually unchanged over much of the period between 1766
and 1803. Even the overall number of holdings did not change dramatically,
with only seasonal shifts in the number of smaller holdings (tables 1-3)15. Con-
trary to other parts of Upper Silesia, no evidence of the increase in the number
of landless or semi-landless classes has been found in the parish. At the present
state of the investigation it is an open question to what extent one could speak
of low demographic pressure. Mainly, a low growth rate of population could be
caused by the high mortality rates typical of Upper Silesia at that time (Ła-
dogórski 1955). Even the lack of landed property seemed not to terminate one’s
ability to marry and to form an independent household. It might be surprising
that in a theoretically closed system of feudal estates lacking the existence of
land market, the disinherited sons who had to leave the parental farm did not
necessary experience downward mobility. Surprisingly enough, they often
found possibilities to maintain the father’s social position and sometimes en-
riched it through buying up the holdings they came into (Szołtysek 2003, p.
305).
The strategies used by non-inheriting male offspring consisted of setting up
the new household by taking off one of the vacancies in the village, marriage
with the heiress of a holding, in-marriage in a farm governed by a widow,
service or emigration. There is also evidence for marriages and also remar-
riages among not propertied lodgers both in their young and old ages. To sum-
marize: one is tempted to argue that the so-called Nischenmechanismus or
Stellenprinzip was not at work in Bujakow (see more in Szołtysek 2003, p. 296;
also Fertig 2001; Zeitlhofer 2003). However, the issue certainly requires further
and much more detailed investigation.
15 However, there were some abrupt transitions during the period under study. In 1786 the
number of households has suddenly increased in the village of Bujakow (table 1) with 40%
of households from that year not possible to capture in the enumeration of 1785. Also, the
percentage of extended families increased. In Klein Painow (table 2) there was a sudden fall
in numbers and rise in percentage of extended families in 1793. Also in the third parochial
village (table 3) there was a change over a longer period (1770-1785 and 1786-1792). There
is no clear explanation of these phenomena at present. Only in the first of the cases men-
tioned above, one can suspect these could have been caused by: the changes in the enu-
meration basis and/or landlord policy; by household management by landlords (varying
rules on who can live with whom); or by varying enumeration procedures perhaps to escape
taxes or other impositions that could all had been in relation with the changes among the
owners of the Bujakow dominium between 1785 and 1788. The confrontation of household
lists for the rest of the parochial villages with other sources from the period made it clear
that they have been affected by such drawbacks to much lesser extent (see more in Szołty-
sek 2003, p. 193-201).
157
Our study of the two Great Poland localities is only based on demographic
sources, so very little is known about their economic history. However, the
presence of wastelands has been often considered as typical for that region, as a
consequence of the warfare of 1st and the beginning of the 2nd half of 18th cen-
tury, which resulted in low population pressure (Baranowski 1971, pp. 29-30;
Baranowski 1958, p. 45; Topolski 1956, pp. 86-87). The large estates were
infrequent there, as well as peasants sitting on large farms (Baranowski 1971,
p. 31; Baranowski 1958, pp. 19-21; Topolski 1956, pp. 108-109, 124). Instead,
the dominant form of peasant holding in the region was a Gärtner family sit-
ting on acreage of ca. 9 hectares and obliged to serve a landlord in the form of
corvee without draft animals (Baranowski 1971, pp. 53-54; Topolski 1956, p.
107). Thus, it seems reasonable to speak of low population pressure accompa-
nied by a relatively moderate obligation burden for rural families. Both factors
worked as incentives to neo-local household formation.
Stayers
The question remains who were those who had taken co-residence as an option
and why they had done so? We can approach the issue from several different
angles.
Within the rules of the second serfdom system the transmission of property
usually meant nothing more than one heir taking over the headship over the
whole farmstead and the house ground and paying off the rest of the heirs,
usually at their marriage (Ehmer 1998; Plakans 1972). However, it also implied
devolution of distinct rights to the chosen heir, concerning management and
even usufruct of the property, though without the perfect right to deal with this.
Within the reality of the system, then, to be a future heir usually meant not
being a farmhand, cotter, lodger or resident of the manor house, that is one of
those who lacked residential and life-cycle stability. Holding a headship
“meant privileges for the whole family that ranged from avoiding onerous
corvee labour, to enjoying residential stability in old age”, and thus, it was “a
valuable prize in the peasant game of life” (Wetherell and Plakans 1998, p.
334).
Additional factors may have been at work on the parents’ side, being re-
sponsible for offspring’s failure to achieve residential autonomy or at least for
its postponing. First, household heads might have aimed at increasing the la-
bour capacity of the household and manipulated married children into co-
residence through the promise to hand over the holding in the future. In that
case cohabitation would emerge as a matter of power relationships (Verdon
1998, p. 64). This seems plausible within the context of second serfdom system
(Kochanowicz 1983; Szołtysek 2003b). Here, it was not a “familial ideology”
but rather changes in the level of familial labour power that stimulated attempts
158
by the heads to keep the size and structure of their domestic group. Labour
requirements imposed on peasants obliged to perform a corvee could prompt
household heads to concentrate the family manpower in the form of a secon-
dary unit down within household, despite heads’ awareness of the potentially
conflictual nature of the co-residence.
This kind of pattern has been shown for the parish of Będków16. There, a de-
tailed investigation of the developmental cycles of domestic groups has shown
that hired farmhands were prevalent among household owners below the age of
45, but almost completely absent within households governed by heads be-
tween 45 and 64 years17. In the latter age group the age of offspring made it
possible for heads to satisfy the household labour needs by utilizing exclusively
the work force of their immediate kin—grown-up sons and daughters18. Within
the heads’ age group of 55 to 64 years, much of this household labour potential
was achieved by co-resident kin and married offspring (Rzemieniecki 2004a).
At the same time, however, the research on family cycles in Będków has re-
vealed that peasants could have hardly been considered as reluctant to neo-
local rules of household formation, and that they were capable of balancing the
family economic and labour needs by hired labour force. This certainly does
not fit the model of nuclear hardship from above proposed by Woźniak
(Woźniak 1987, pp. 93-94).
An indirect supportive evidence for the pattern presented above could be
found in the parish of Bujakow as well. There, between 1766 and 1803 multi-
ple family households with secondary units down (type 5b according to Las-
lett’s terminology) appeared 51 times in “communion books”19, while their
largest concentration took place within the group of well-to-do peasants, that is
those having the largest labour obligations. These multiple family households
occurred twice as numerous among Bauern than among smallholders.
The second goal that an older generation might have probably tried to
achieve by manipulating children (often married) into co-residence, could have
been searching for provision for the old age. While some Ausgedinge Verträge
reveal the conflictual character of retirement under stem family rules (Gaunt
1983), they cast no doubt that elderly people who co-resided with their imme-
diate kin were better off than those who had to become lodgers or even beggars.
16 The analysis has been restricted to 50 out of 83 households from the rural part of the parish
of Będków. The presence of hired labour force and a head’s offspring within households
has been used as a criterion in sampling the data (Rzemieniecki 2004a).
17 Among household heads older than 59, one can again observe the prevalence of hired
labour.
18 The weak point in our reasoning is that we lack information either on the social category of
the head or on the size of the holding at his disposal.
19 The total number of ‘events’ reached 95, but it resulted, however, from repeated occur-
rences of the same multiple constellations among the same family households through sev-
eral enumerations.
159
Lust but not least, having a married heir at home might have served as a
strategy to keep headship over the holding within the family (Plakans 1972). In
fact, the cases of multiplied transfers from Bujakow show that at least some
peasants tried to keep the holdings among the closest kin as long as possible
(Szołtysek 2004a). We think there is reason to believe that this pattern is also
applicable to communities from Great Poland, at least to some extent (Rzemie-
niecki 2004a; Górny 1993)20.
Family-centred or not?
In order to measure how far residence patterns in our sample were based on
familial principles, two additional procedures will be applied before reaching
the conclusion. Due to differences in the character of source materials at hand,
the analysis is now restricted only to Great Poland communities.
One way to approach the issue is to analyse welfare functions as performed
by family households, especially with regards to the elderly. In order to pursue
that goal we have collected the data on the position of the elderly within house-
holds and on the type of residential arrangements they lived in. They are pre-
sented in the table 6 and figures 9-10.
The residential patterns of those over 54 in the village population of Będ-
ków revealed a relative importance of the family as a welfare institution that
took care of its elderly, regardless of their sex (table 6). In case of those males
and females who have not been in charge of the household any more, it was the
family of their own married children or other more distant kin that had offered
the shelter for the majority of them. All but one of the women aged more than
54 in the parish (9 cases; female household heads and heads’ wives excluded)
have been registered as belonging to households of their relatives. This was an
experience of one third of elderly males within the same age group (3 out of 9
cases; household heads excluded). Counting males and females above the age
54 altogether (figure 9) we can estimate that 20% of members of this group
lived with people to whom they were not related by kinship.
20 It should be pointed out, however, that not all but the majority of family constellations of
multiple type 5b in Bujakow parish have led to subsequent succession over headship of
previously subjugated married son or son-in-law. In 13 out of the total number of 37 cases
with completed family cycles, co-residence of two generation has not resulted in intergen-
erational interchange (cases with incomplete family cycles lacking the transmission of a
headship office have been excluded).
160
Table 6: Living arrangements of the people above 54—two parishes of
Great Poland, 1791.
Będków Piątek
Position within
household
Absolute
numbers
Absolute num-
bers
MALES
Houshold head 12 8
Kin (father, fa-
ther-in-law,
brother)
3 9
Servant 3 2
Lodger 2 5
Unspecified 1 1
Altogether 21 25
FEMALES
Houshold head 2 2
Head’s wife 3 1
Kin (mother,
sister, mother-in-
law)
8 8
Servant 0 1
Lodger 1 22
Altogether 14 34
Figure 9
Living arrangements of the people above 54—the
parish of Bedków, 1791 (males and females together)
48,6
20
28,6
2,8
0
20
40
60
80
100
on his own with non-
relatives
with married
children
with relatives
Living:
Percentage
The things were going differently in Piątek, both for males and females. Still, a
large part of all men over 54 who did not hold the headship anymore spent their
161
lives in the households of their immediate or more distant kin (table 6). This
time, however, it concerns more than 50% of this group (9 out of 17 cases).
The striking feature of the pattern revealed in Piątek is, however, that only one
quarter of females in the corresponding age and household group was in a
position to experience similar conditions (8 out of 31 cases). Considering males
and females together, almost half of those over 54 in the parish spent their lives
co-residing with people to whom they were not related through kinship (figure
10). If we consider only those not being in charge of the household, this pro-
portion would be much larger and would account more than 63% of the group
(“unspecified” excluded).
Figure 10
To approach the issue from a different angle we decided to follow the pro-
cedures introduced by Richard Wall (Wall 1998). Thus, we allocated all indi-
viduals listed in the communities (towns and manor houses excluded) accord-
ing to whether they were or were not the members of a core family group,
defined so as to include unmarried children resident with at least one parent,
married couples and lone parents. All the persons who were not members of the
families were classified according to whether they lived with relatives, with
non-relatives only or alone (figures 11-14). It should be stressed here—in line
with Wall’s methodological remarks—that in this case the focus was on the
individual and not the household, while the relatives have been identified not
by their relationship to the household head but by their relationship with any
household member in the absence of closer family ties (see more in Wall 1998,
pp. 52-59).
Living arrangements of the people above 54―the
parish of Piątek, 1791 (males and females
together)
16,9 11,9
22
49,2
0
20
40
60
80
100
on his own with non-
relatives
with married
children
with relatives
Living:
Percentage
162
Figure 11: Relationship within households, Będków 1791 (males).
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0–4 5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60
Age
Lone father Other relative Non-relative Son Husband
Figure 12: Relationship within households, Będków 1791 (females).
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0–4 5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60
Age
Lone mother Other relative Non-relative Daughter Wife
163
Figure 13: Relationship within households, Piątek 1791 (males).
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0–4 5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60
Age
Lone father Other relative Non-relative Son Husband
Figure 14: Relationship within households, Piątek 1791 (females).
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0–4 5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60
Age
Lone mother Other relative Non-relative Daughter Wife
First of all, these figures reveal again quite well the children’s graduate de-
parture from home and the presence of life-cycle service in the communities,
proving the correctness of conclusions made above. One important feature of
the pattern we describe is the diversity of individual life-cycles. For a signifi-
cant part of these people the relationships were not restricted to the roles of
sons/daughters and husbands and wives or relatives for other co-resident people.
164
The most distinctive feature of the relationship patterns for both sexes and in
both localities was the incidence of co-residence with non-relatives and the
virtual absence of living alone21. Co-residence with more distant relatives was
rare even in the absence of parent-child or couple relationships. Co-residence
with non-relatives mostly occurred during the teenage years and early adult-
hood. However, even numerous cases of this relationship could have also oc-
curred in other age groups across the life span, excluding males from the vil-
lage of Piątek.
The figures also made striking differences visible in residential patterns.
Male life-cycles in Piątek were more stable than in Będków, especially in the
age groups from 35 to 54 (figures 11 and 13). Among females, a reversed pat-
tern has occurred, with extensive diversification of their relationships and large
incidence of living with non-relatives in Piątek (figures 12 and 14).
Nevertheless, the overall picture that emerges from this analysis seems to be
much less family-centred when compared to what Richard Wall has revealed
for Hungarian and Corsican communities, where it was very rare to live only
with non-relatives at any point in the life-cycle. On the other hand, female
relationship patterns from the village of Piątek resemble quite well English
evidence (Wall 1998, p. 56).
Conclusion
Certainly, readers may be eager to know much more about several other fea-
tures of the communities we have studied, such as their demographic parame-
ters and the way they had influenced the composition of households there
(Levy 1965, pp. 41-42, 50-52; Burch 1967, 1972; Wachter, Hammel and Las-
lett 1978; Ruggles 1987; Ruggles 1990, pp. 22-30). Another issue that could
broaden our picture of family interrelationships in the communities would be
the complex modality of property transmission (Sabean 1990, 1998)22. Fur-
thermore, it seems clear for us that household as such is not the most suitable
unit for the analysis of intra-familiar relationships, for concentration on struc-
tural analysis of households alone makes it impossible to reveal kinship net-
works that could have been operating from beyond the domestic groups (Pla-
kans and Wetherell 2003; Plakans 1987; Kertzer, Hogan and Karweit 1992).
Last but not least, the deficiencies and drawbacks of single household lists—as
those we used for Great Poland parishes—are widely known (Berkner 1972;
Janssens 1993; Leboutte 1998). However, the findings we have presented so far
21 The lone mothers and fathers were not counted as “living alone” because of their off-
spring’s presence in the household.
22 This issue will be explored for Silesian parish of Bujakow on the base of Prussian Grund
Akten (Szołtysek 2005a).
165
seem to be an excellent starting point for further and more detailed investiga-
tion of family forms in this borderland area of East-Central Europe. At the
same time, the findings themselves as they are now should not be considered
meaningless.
The evidence we presented, sketchy though it was, on residence patterns
within the communities astride the Hajnal line, indicated that there was a con-
siderable complexity and diversity of individual behaviours, which is not cap-
tured by the conventional classification of family systems according to the
proportion of simple or more complex household forms. It seems clear that
within the second serfdom context of the parish of Bujakow and two localities
from Great Poland, large proportion of young adults were searching for resi-
dential autonomy, even if this finding requires further investigation and more
precise estimations. Whether consciously heading for being on its own or being
coerced to do so, a significant part of the young generation in Bujakow gained
residential autonomy. A similar process has taken place in the two Great Po-
land parishes taking the form of children’s gradual departure from parental
households.
We have made attempts to sketch incentives and disincentives for both neo-
locality and co-residence that could have been operating within the communi-
ties under study, and could have shaped peoples’ preferences for residential
patterns. Certainly, our sources do not indicate what living arrangements the
inhabitants of Bujakow, Będków and Piątek might actually have preferred, had
they been given the option. However, it seems plausible for us to argue that
those who resigned themselves to their fate by deciding to co-reside with the
older generation have done so mainly because of constraints imposed on them
by particular socio-economic circumstances they were thrust into, or because
they were coerced to do so by the older generation acting in line with labour
demand/supply mechanisms built into the very logic of the feudal system.
On the other hand, in Great Poland many people lived with non-relatives,
particularly (but not only) the servants. This in turn suggests, that day-to-day
interactions many people have had during their life-cycles can not be labelled
as strictly “familial”. No doubt, this relative lack of “family-centred principles”
or “familial ideology” in communities we study can be captured only indirectly
in our source material, and in fact it is the matter of assumptions and interpreta-
tion. Our own interpretation states that the residential patterns we described can
hardly be conceived as fitting into the image of family-centred societies; what
we can see in our communities are people who, like atoms, took movements in
different directions and played the part of various familial and non-familial
roles. Notwithstanding, peasant’s general reluctance towards residential auton-
omy—as Kula’s and Woźniak’s argument went—is hardly visible in our mate-
rial.
Certainly, we still do not know what role landlords exactly played within
these communities and how and to what extent they actually influenced indi-
166
vidual and family behaviour (Szoltysek 2003, 2004c, pp. 87-88). However, in
our view, it seems realistic to suppose that peasants’ preferences towards resi-
dence did not change dramatically after the abolition of serfdom in 19th century.
Indeed, the sketchy evidence we have for that period suggests that even when
some couples have taken co-residence with the older generation as an option,
they have done it because of hindrances they had been exposed to (Styś 1957,
1959).
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