Letters from Wałcz region and Krajna till the end of the XVIII century from the resources of State Archives in Toruń

Abstract

This article tries to familiarise the correspondence from Wałcz region and Krajna to Toruń magistrate on the basis of letters stored in the holding of State Archives in Toruń. 75 catalogue descriptions of letters from 12 towns located in the north-western territories next to the borders of pre-partition Republic of Poland were presented. One cannot exclude that there are more of them in Toruń Archives, but only two sections chosen from so called Catalogue II (Acts of Toruń) and Catalogue III (Craftsman letters) were submitted in the query.
Chronological borders of the correspondence presented are from 1402 to 1799; however, majority of the correspondence come from the XVIII century. The authors are both private persons and institutions (craftsman associations, city councils, evangelical commune council). Among craftsmen and city council letters one can find so called birth certificates (Geburtsbrief ), job certificates (Lehrbrief ) and ecommending letters (Empfehlungsbrief ). Court letters concern cases similar to contemporary ones: inheritance issues, suits for vendor cheating, legal proceeding in case of murders and others. Private persons ask the city council of Toruń to help them execute debts from Toruń inhabitants. Evangelical commune from Łobżenica asks a few times for financial help.
Material gathered in the article constitutes the excellent source for research on chancery’s functioning at that time, both when it comes to senders and recipients of letters.
One can see some regularity in the forms of some typical documents – just like crafts man letters mentioned above – independently of the town they were issued. After the first partition of Poland (1772), when the territories under discussion were taken over by Prussia, there appeared even printed forms of certificates of craftsmen training. Court correspondence was ad hoc in nature, where only polite forms of address were repeated. Later, letter content was described and the recipient noted down the date of their receipt. Only a few craftsman letters were written on the parchment paper, rest of them were paper. Thanks to that, one can find water marks next to common samples; there are also watermarks hardly ever met in the subject literature. With majority of letters there are seals of senders, among others hanging wax seals, shellac seals, paper-shellac seals and wafer seals. The correspondence was mainly in German language due to the neighbourhood of Brandenburg and later – Prussia. Latin and Polish languages were used as well. The condition of letters varies a lot – from excellent to poor. Letters of Catalogue III are currently stored separately while the letters of Catalogue II are stored in sewn files.