Karen,   Thank you for your insight. But just to keep the record straight, I did not write about the inheritance. I was the one inquiring. LaVerne, researching  PIETSCHMANN --- On Mon, 8/24/09, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [GERMAN-BOHEMIAN] Eger: German Reichstadt and laws To: [email protected] Date: Monday, August 24, 2009, 5:54 PM In a message dated 8/21/2009 3:00:49 PM Mountain Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: There was a provision that farm-land could be distributed among siblings only up to a certain farm-size, and beyond that, there were no land gifts allowed. This was to safeguard the farm's agricultural income potential.  I cannot remember how much land was safe-guarded in this way, but I think that 20 hectares were the lowest limit. I believe Aida is correct about 20 Hetares being the minimum size for a farm. A farmer with less than that probably could not support a family.  Many farmers had a trade as well as farmland so the trade might provide secondary income. The reason I believe that 20 Hectares was the minimum is because that was the oft-repeated size of a small farm in land record books even into the 1860s. In some parts of the Bavarian borderlands / Bavarian Forest an extended farm family might all live together in one household - often a large two story  building with living quarters over the barn.   I believe Hirschau had a number of such farmsteads.   When those families reached the point that the farm could no longer support everyone, the family might agree that someone had to go -- often to America where there was cheap land available.     I suspect that those who departed were probably not the oldest sons and their families.    .  When a son left he may have been given some of his "inheritance" in cash if the family could afford it. Unmarried girls who left may have been given "dowry"  money. Raising the cash to help a family member depart might require selling some property, produce, livestock or contracting for service of some kind.   My great grandfather borrowed the money to pay his passage to America from his best friend and neighbor (Franz Biebl) in Severance Twp. MN.   His father, mother and younger brother followed after selling their farm about a year later, as did his uncle with his large family.   I have never tried to learn what was paid for either family's farm.   I know they had enough money when they arrived in Minnesota to buy more than the typical 80 acre first purchase by immigrants. It would be interesting to know who took  possession of the land that belonged to these two families back in the Egerland -- if a farmer living in the same village took a mortgage and took them over or if new people arrived to farm that land. The 1868 Austrian Law that had to do with conscription made the YOUNGEST son the inheritor because he was thought to be the one who would end up taking care of elderly parents. Older brothers would be off on their own property long before the need to care for their elders arose.  For that reason youngest sons -- and only sons-- were ineligible for the draft.      Another draft dodge was having a family farm that was large enough that one man could not work it himself -- so his sons were allowed to stay at home and work with him.   Their whereabouts would be monitored because if any of them chose to work elsewhere they had to have a worker's passbook. Many men were drafted when they were working away from their home place and they ended up in regiments from the place where they were living at the time. One thing that would affect land ownership by younger family members were marriage contracts.    Many of these old documents are still available in the various archives of the CR.    The groom was expected to contribute to establishment of a household capable of supporting a family and so was the bride.   Brides often brought land, livestock, money and household goods to a marriage.  The groom had to bring land, a trade (if possible), money and certain "gifts"  for the bride and her family. Larger farms could be the result of a farmer's son marrying an only daughter  or widow who had inherited a farm with buildings and land;  and that land would ultimately be combined with the son/husbands prior holding or marriage contract bequest or inheritance from his family.    Farmers who could afford it tried to purchase land adjoining theirs with mortgages, through marriage, trade services or any other means...marriage being the most common.    Sometimes these deals were arranged so that a farmer might exchange his field in an area convenient to his neighbor's for one of his neighbor's that was more convenient for him. Originally a farm holding might be in one or more long, narrow fields.    They were long and narrow because wooden plows were very difficult to turn.  When the iron plow was invented it solved the technical aspects of that problem but field configuration did not change for a very long time afterwards.   The elderberry hedges that often separated farmer's fields were very well established and may have discouraged combining neighboring fields even when a single farmer managed to get control of both of them. A farmer who had several fields might have one right behind his Hof, another beyond two or more neighboring fields and perhaps  even others that were some distance away. There were common pastures and  meadows (hay) in each village so farmers did not have to have the land to pasture livestock or grow hay. So land and other inheritance items could be distributed before the death of a property owner. The question is whether the authorities took any of that into consideration when setting up an "equitable" property division after his death. There was a Hungarian law that also demanded division of property among all heirs.   The result was that there were many impoverished and uneducated peasants with barely a garden who still had the right to vote in Hungary -- a right held only by the nobility at the time.    Some of the upper nobility got around the law and actually increased family holdings through marriages and other legal (and possible some illegal) machinations that they understood how  to use. One thing today's farmers should appreciate is that Bohemian farmers often carried large mortgages on their property in order to get more land, get the land into production and buy seed in the spring.  Some reasons to buy the seed they should have set aside from the last season's harvest was that they were not planting the same crop; soldiers had come through and taken all the grain; there was not enough from a poor harvest to feed a family through the winter so they had to eat set aside seed grains. Farmers would pay off their mortgages with profit from the harvest if they could.  Sometimes a balance was left to accumulate more each year until the lender would finally take the property.    There are many records of farmers complaining to the tax authorities and anyone who would listen that they expected their lenders to take over their property soon because they anticipated another bad harvest (most often because of bad weather), their livestock were sick or their livestock feed was rotten, their chosen secondary trade had no present market, or any number of other reasons.   The Chronicles of Mies tells of a terrible windstorm that destroyed forest land and farm crops just before the harvest one year.   Another report tells about a year when it was so wet at plowing time that the fields were thick mud in which oxen lost their shoes.   A series of bad harvests all in a row would bring land speculators who would start to produce the crops that were the most profitable during a dearth.   Sometimes they became very well off.   Other times the next season would have a bumper crop that drove down prices and they would end in the same financial trouble as the farmers from whom they bought their "cheap"  land. Lenders might be responsible for "collecting"  farms which they might choose to market in a new configuration (more or fewer fields) or they might combine for the benefit of their own families. Some of the more enlightened nobililty knew farmers had to learn to produce for a surplus and not just for subsistance.   A couple of the more wealthy nobles ran Agronomy schools where they taght farmers to improve their breed of cattle or sheep (Australian Merino sheep were introduced at one such school), and to introduce new machinery and techniques like crop rotation.  Some nobles even let farmers in their districts use prize bulls, rams and other livestock as sires for improved breeds. Some of those schools were still in operatiion after 1848. Karen German-Bohemian Heritage Society web site http://www.rootsweb.com/~gbhs/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message