Metadata: Kamenets Land Court
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Kyiv
- Holding institution (official language):
- Центральний державний історичний архів України, м. Київ
- Postal address:
- 03110, м. Київ-110, вул. Солом'янська, 24
- Phone number:
- 380 (044) 275-30-02
- Web address:
- cdiak.archives.gov.ua
- Email:
- mail.cdiak@arch.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 37
- Title:
- Kamenets Land Court
- Title (official language):
- Каменецкий земский суд
- Creator/accumulator:
- Kamenets Land Court
- Date(s):
- 1521/1790
- Language:
- Ukrainian
- Hebrew
- Latin
- Polish
- Russian
- Extent:
- 50 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
The description below is based on a single catalogue entry that describes in general terms a group of institutionally related fonds, which are listed individually in the Yerusha database. The description covers material from the land courts of Bratslav, Vladimir, Zhitomir, Zaslav County, Kamenets, Kanev, Kiev Wojewodship, Kremenets, Lutsk, Naddneprianskoe, Ovruch, Starokonstantinov and Cherkassy and Chigirin Counties (Kiev Province). Information known to refer to the Kamenets Land Court fond in particular is mentioned in the final paragraph.
***
The fond contains official document registers and files of the land court in question during the period of Polish rule, and/or of the judicial institution – county [povetovye, uezdnye] or higher land court – that replaced the former castle and land courts when this territory became part of Russia. These registers and files, written in Old Ukrainian (with Latin elements), Hebrew, Latin, Polish (with Latin elements) and Russian, contain documents of mainly an economic nature; records of governmental acts; inventories (including those of land [liustratsii]) of cities, villages, castles, and estates; documents on the exaction of taxes, and registers of “hearths” [dymy, the household unit by which the podymne tax was assessed]; documents issued by the offices of castle, land, and other courts; documents verifying property rights; etc.
Materials pertaining to the Jewish population come mainly in the form of fragmentary records in official document registers and may be provisionally divided into several subject groups:
1. Complaints filed by Jews and their patrons (owners of population centres), bailiffs’ [woźni] «сознанья» и реляции, court rulings, agreements, and other documents on cases of Jews failing to pay financial and other debts; of breaches of the conditions of Jews’ right to rent estates, inns, ponds, mills, and other real estate, or of the early termination of this right; of breaches of various contracts and agreements, including on the purchase and sale of lumber, grain, nitre (saltpetre), and potash, and of failure to supply transport for the shipment of such goods to other regions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; of assaults, beatings, and robberies of Jews; and cases of the seizure of transported goods (e.g., of fish being shipped to Lublin).
2. Complaints, affidavits, and court rulings on Jews’ failure to pay debts and rental sums; failure to return pawned items; rental abuses: the unlawful assumption of property, the causing of damages to rented estates or suffered by the tenants thereof, and cases of mismanagement and neglect; and on Jews’ breaches of agreements and contracts.
3. Records of writs, contracts, and agreements on the sale of real estate and goods; on borrowing money from Jews on pawn; and on the transfer of pawned items to their ownership.
4. Inventories (including those of land [liustratsii]) of cities and towns, with information on the Jewish population; and inventories of villages rented by Jews.
5. Files and documents on changes in legal procedure in lands of Right-Bank Ukraine annexed to Russia in 1793-95; on the termination of former castle and land courts in this region and the opening of new judicial institutions to take their place; and on the functions of these new institutions and the expansion of their jurisdiction to various categories of the population, including Jews.
***
Particular to the Kamenets Land Court are complaints of assaults, beatings, and robberies of Jews (including a formal complaint [protestacja] filed by the rabbi and whole Jewish community of the city of Kamenets against local Christian workmen who, led by their guildmasters and with numerous accomplices, had committed an armed attack on the synagogue and on the residences of Jews, plundering these and desecrating sacred Jewish objects in the building of the synagogue; implicit in the text of the document is that this conflict was rooted in economic competition between Jewish and Christian butchers).
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary