Metadata: “Records of the General Congregations 1841-1842, 1847” and “Records of Partial Congregations 1845”
Collection
- Country:
- Romania
- Holding institution:
- National Archives of Romania, Cluj State Archives, Cluj
- Holding institution (official language):
- Arhivele Nationale ale Romaniei, Direcția Județeană a Arhivelor Naționale Cluj
- Postal address:
- Cluj-Napoca, Str. Mihail Kogălniceanu nr. 10, cod 400084, jud. Cluj
- Phone number:
- (40) 64 598 979
- Web address:
- http://www.arhivelenationale-cluj.ro
- Email:
- cluj@arhivelenationale.ro
- Reference number:
- II.
- Title:
- “Records of the General Congregations 1841-1842, 1847” and “Records of Partial Congregations 1845”
- Title (official language):
- Protocoale şi acte ale adunărilor generale 1841-1842, 1847', 'Protocolul adunării mici 1845'
- Creator/accumulator:
- Szatmár county
- Date(s):
- 1842/1847
- Language:
- Latin
- Hungarian
- Extent:
- 8 volumes
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The collections ‘Records of the General Congregations 1841-1842, 1847’ and the ‘Records of Partial Congregations 1845’ contain the records of the noble congregations for the years 1841, 1842, 1847 and, in the case of the partial congregations, for 1845. The collection held at the Kolozsvár (Cluj) State Archives is fragmentary and forms a unit with the material maintained in the Nyíregyháza Archives. However, specific years (1617-1628, 1657, 1731, 1751-1753, 1787-1789) are not available in any of the collections.
Congregations of nobilities constituted the intermediate level of public administration towards the end of the feudal administration system, and they fulfilled the roles of both public administration and jurisdiction. The documents feature submissions to congregations, investigations, notifications, reports, lists of tax assessments and liabilities. In addition, they include orders of emissaries, reports, correspondence with other counties, commands of the Royal Council of Governor-general, information on the operation of guilds or related commands, information on transport (roads, bridges) and various types of inventories. The documents of the general and partial congregations deal with contracts, promissory notes, debt securities, decisions about debts and collections, bankruptcy proceedings, cases of trespassing, lawsuits of landlords and tenants of farming leases, service obligations imposed on peasants, issues of insurrection, conscriptions of tenants, surveys of estates, provisions and equipment for noble insurgents, appointment of officials, recruitment, enlisting of new soldiers, promotion of handcraft industry, regulations and rules regarding guilds and religious affairs. The records were written in mostly Hungarian, but some of them are in Latin and German. The volumes of the source material include the congregation meetings in certain years in chronological order.
The collection does not exclusively comprise Jewish-related subjects. The volumes include about 616 entries with Jewish-related information. The first entry in the studied period is from 1841 and deals with the economic activity of Ezekiel Roóz in Nagykároly (1841 No. 123.). These entries are similar to others in the collection: they comprise orders imposed on the Jews by the Council of Governor-General or the county, inventories, lists of tax assessments, information, reports and petitions submitted by Jewish citizens. The subjects covered by the remaining documents are very diverse: information on migration, petitions for settlement, warrants for escapees, search for foreign escapees, farming leases contracted with landlords and lawsuits related to them, contracts, debt certificates, business relationships with the members of the local community and also with the county, commercial activities (peddling, small and wholesale trading), handicraft trade, cowhide purchase, conflicts with guilds, schedules for debt payment or collection, crimes where victims could also be the perpetrators, horse theft, murders, use of fake money, taxation imposed on Jewish citizens, rate of tolerance tax, the volume and recovery of arrears, issues of inheritance, religious affairs, community cases and issues of conversion. The groups of various subjects highlight that both the issues of public administration and jurisdiction are available in the collection.
Geographically speaking, the records mirror the settlement patterns of the Jewish community in Szatmár County: the vast majority of records refer to the members of the Jewish community and society living under the authority of the Nagykároly domain (community tax: 1842 No. 940.), but they describe the situation and activities of Jewish inhabitants in numerous small-size habitations (Nagykálló, Nyírmeggyes, Királydarócz). Both national and county residents' cases appear in the records. The source material includes entries referring predominantly to individuals rather than communities: Samuel Gottlieb‘s debt case (1841 No. 145.), Abraham Berger request for enforcement (1842 No. 116.), Hers Iskovits’s arrears (1842 No. 319.), Mihály Simon’s horse theft case (1847 No 532.).
- Archival history:
-
The document collection of Szatmár County is based on documents preserved by county officials as no archives had been established before the 16th century. Therefore, initially mostly congregation records were collected in Szatmár County. The categorisation of the collected materials started under the rule of Maria Theresa (1740-1780). The documents were also classified into subject groups at that time. The archives were established in Nagykároly and the documents collected previously were also held there. The emergence of the new borders after World War I resulted in the division of the documents and also the relocation of the archives. Part of the materials remained in Hungary, whereas the other part was taken to Romania. Documents of the congregation of nobilities were also divided regardless of their timespan.
In Romania, the archival material was first transferred to Nagykároly (Carei) and then to the new county seat of Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare). In 1940 the documents were placed in the collection of the Kolozsvár (Cluj) State Archives. In the same year, the archival collections were evacuated to Nagyszeben (Sibiu), and a small part of them was transferred to Torda. The documentary material was not spared the ravages of war. After the war, the collections were returned to Kolozsvár. In the case of the feudal period materials, the division of the material between the archives of Nyíregyháza (Hungary) and Cluj (Direcția Județeană a Arhivelor Naționale Cluj) (Romania) poses a practical difficulty for research.
- Access points: locations:
- Nagykároly
- System of arrangement:
- The records comprise both the material of general and partial congregations. The structure of the records found in the Kolozsvár (Cluj) material is similar to that of the records found in Nyíregyháza from 1792 onwards, i.e. the minutes of one year were bound into two volumes. The numbering of the minutes restarted each year and was continuous within a given year.
- Finding aids:
- No handbooks are available for this material.
- Yerusha Network member:
- University of Szeged
- Author of the description:
- Dr. Tibor Almási, Dr. Erzsébet Mislovics, University of Szeged, 2019