Court trading book
A court trading book (locally or regionally and Office Paper , Erbbuch , trading book , purchase book , Landbuch in Tirol Verfachbuch or inheritance book called; there is for the German language area certainly are many other names) contains handwritten, registered in a book logs on sales contracts for homes, farmsteads and properties in one municipality or in several neighboring municipalities.
In addition to the church registers , court trade books are not only another important source of genealogy , but also of extraordinary importance for local chronicles , local history and regional history . The systematic indexing of the court trade books by regesta and the charting of the purchase contracts with the aim of listing the house chronicle , the property chronicle , the house book or - if you include the people living in it in the processing - the development of a family book is a challenge for every genealogist Local history explorer .
In some parishes, the court records begin as early as the first half of the 16th century, sometimes before the church records. In the past, the court trade books were located in the respective locations or responsible offices , today they are centralized in the territorially responsible state archives . They are also available as films, copies of which can be purchased.
The court trade books mostly contain sales contracts, occasionally one can also find birth letters , wills , inheritance regulations , sales of straight and military equipment , guardianship regulations , but only in rare cases lease contracts.
The most important sources of personal history are the purchase contracts. At the beginning and the end of the contract, the buyer and seller are named and - if given - their relationship to each other, in the case of non-local buyers often also their place of origin; there is also an indication of the location of the house or the hooves . If the previous owner has died, his heirs act as the seller. Usually it's the children; Underage children with guardians (these are often neighbors), married daughters with their husbands, if they are not local, then stating their place of residence, plus the widow with a “warrior guardian”. Often, however, initially only the "widow" and the "uneducated children" are spoken of, but their first name is then sometimes mentioned somewhere in the middle of the often pages-long text of the purchase contract (for example in the extract regulations). You must therefore read this text carefully. The details are - apart from the purchase price itself, which characterizes the economic situation of the house or property, and the deposit - of particular interest for folklore and economic history (e.g. the inventory ). Usually at the end of the purchase contract, the judges and judges present are named, often followed by the official confirmation by the Schösser .
The most important genealogical source is then the subsequent times of the day , i. H. the itemized determination of when certain parts of the purchase price are due and to whom is to be paid. The heirs are often mentioned by name, but the term “7 Wagner heirs” is often used, or the “widow” and the “daughters”. The payments had to be confirmed. This shows who and in what year z. B. married a daughter and where she then lived. From this and also from the payments of “breeding money” for underage children and of equipment money in the event of marriage or coming of age, the year of birth for individual persons can be estimated fairly well. If an heir dies, his children (or heirs) acknowledge his inheritance.
Apparently, such information offers a suitable source of personal history, so that some difficulties must be pointed out: A person can own several houses and goods in the same place at the same time, and the same name (in different spellings) can appear several times in the place. The owners of a house or property often died before the decades of the days of their purchase were fully paid for. In the case of the now necessary resale, sometimes to a complete stranger, the times of the day for the creditors must be taken over from the first purchase and they are mentioned again at the end of the second purchase contract (by name or flat rate) for the times of the day. This can now occur several times in a row, so that it would be wrong to infer a relationship between the seller and the people named during the day from the mention of the times of the day if this is not clearly documented.
The exchange of goods (often associated with compensation payments) and short-term purchases and resales were made in order to better meet financial burdens from daytime obligations and other debts. If someone needed cash quickly, he could sell his inheritance by buying money and receive a smaller sum in return, but this immediately. If someone had incurred debts, then these also had to be settled by his heir and the unrelated creditors appear during the daytime, also in the case of resales, and finally even - if the creditor dies - his heirs.
The cited structure in the form of a court trade book refers to central Germany in the period around 1700. Before 1600 the times of the day are hardly listed in detail, and the court trade books often only contain waiver declarations (that is, receipts ) for payments made, from which family relationships are even more difficult are occupied.
Without thorough knowledge of writing (see palaeography ) and practice in reading the ancient script and without parallel study of the law, customs and dialect of the respective area, you cannot work with court trade books.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry on reference book in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )