Karel said >For being neither a professional historian nor an English-born excuse my >mistakes in both ways. I am also not a professional historian but I am American-born and I had no problem with either your history lesson or your English....so no excuse necessary. My ancestory is half Slovak and half Polish. So for you out there with Polish roots I will attempt to add the Polish words for the same classifications and since many church records use Latin these will be in ( ). Also in Poland, at least, serf classification was not purely designated by land size. For example, a cmethonis could support his family so a man with two farms of 30 morgo'w each with good soil, a wife and three children would be classified as this. But a man with two farms of 30 morgo'w with very poor soil, a wife and 10 children could be classified as a hortulanus. Joanne >The LAN represented so much agricultural soil For those of you interested in a more complete discussion of how land was divided refer to Gerald A. Ortell's book "Polish Parish Records of the Roman Catholic Church" pgs. 10 to 12. But for this listing a simple description would be: There were two principle l~ans used in Poland: the l~an Frakon'ski consisting of 43.2 morgow' and the l~an Flandryskie of 30 morgo'w also known as a wl~oka. The basic unit of land measurement was a "morg". (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Polish plurals morgo'w is one plural of morg) Under the occupation it was set as: Austro-Hungarian-occupied Poland 1 morg equals 1.422 acres Prussian-occupied Poland 1 morg equals 0.631 acres Russian-occupied Polan 1 morg equals 1.388 acres >A) one LAN was owned by one farmer´s family. kmiec' (cmethonis) >B) a subcategory of farmers came into existence: ( = one half) zagrodnik z rola, OR po'lrolnik (semi-cmethonis) >D), still did have some properties - but only a small cottage and a piece of yard >or garden in front or behind their cottage zagrodnik (hortulanus) some cases ogrodnik was used--owned a house with a small vegetable garden but no cropland >E)lived somewhere in a farmer´s house, or in a barn or shed. The Polish even subdivided this classification: (rusticus OR plebus OR inquilinus) chalupnik--only had a small chata, cottage kumornik--lived in a room or partition of someone else's house. This would include elderly parents residing in the house passing to their children kumornik pauperes--did not have any farm animals of their own ka,tnik--lived in the corner of someone else's room pauperes/ubogi--incapable of supporting self