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Metadata (explanation of fields)

SNUM
A number that is assigned to each person, allowing us to track them across the years. (This is simply a serial number assigned by me. It does not appear in the original metrical records, and it has no meaning of its own). Everyone in the Births file has one of these. Only when we match up people in the Deaths and Marriages file with those in the Births file do we update those records with the SNUM.

This field appears as GROOM_SNUM and BRIDE_SNUM in the Marriages file.

Not everyone in these files can be matched with a birth record. Some were born before record-keeping began in 1784, and some moved to the Parish from somewhere else. These people are assigned an arbitrary SNUM when their identity becomes known through tracking their association with particular Houses and determining their family relationships. There is still an enormous amount of research left to do in this area.

SERIAL_NO
Appears as Nrus Serialis in the metrical registers. The parish priest assigned this number to each individual record. It was not consistently used until the mid-19th century, and is largely useless in this dataset.

REC_TYPE
The type of record: Birth, Death or Marriage.

PARISH, PAGUS
The PARISH in these records is always Męcina Wielka. PAGUS refers to the village within the parish, and is either Rozdziele, Wapienne, Pstrążne, or Męcina Wielka itself.

Eventually, we hope to include records from neighboring parishes on this website.

YEAR
The year of the record, provided to assist with sorting and analysis.

DATE
The date of the record, in YYYY.MM.DD format.

HOUSE
The House Number, which is essential for differentiating people with similar or identical names.

In the Marriages file, this appears as GROOM_HOUSE and BRIDE_HOUSE. In general, GROOM_HOUSE can be taken to mean the house where the groom's parents live and where he grew up, but this is not always the case; sometimes, it appears to be the house where the groom is already living, perhaps as a laborer. We frequently see a groom marry the headman's daughter, and he eventually inherits the house.

The BRIDE_HOUSE did not start being recorded until the mid-1840s.

GIVEN_NAME
The person's first name is usually written in Latin, although occasionally the priest used Rusyn or Polish equivalents (this became more common after 1860). There is variation in the spelling of some of the names (e.g. Mathias/Matheus and Ahaphia/Agatha/Agafia, and rather than determine an authoritative spelling, I have chosen simply to record what the priests wrote on the page.

SURNAME
There was enormous variation in the spelling of surnames. In the early records the Rusyn and/or Polish feminine variants were used for women, but this practice eventually stopped and masculine forms dominated.

Usually, when a woman's surname is recorded in the birth and marriage records, it is her maiden name. Sometimes a woman's maiden name will be the same as her husband's surname; it was not uncommon for cousins to marry. Rarely, it appears that the priest simply did not know a woman's maiden name, so he just used her husband's surname.

In the death records of elderly women, the surname is usually that of her last husband.

ALIAS
Often men and women were known by aliases or nicknames. This is indicated in the original records by the Latin words vel, dictus, or recte. Frequently, a person will be known by one surname at birth, and will have changed it by the time of their death. Sometimes there is no documentary evidence that this has happened, and must be inferred.

GENDER
Male (m) or female (f).

NOT_CATHOLIC
This column theoretically permitted the priest to record persons not of the Catholic communion, but in practice I have never seen it used in this parish. Greek Catholics and Roman Catholics both inhabited these villages; the latter were referred to as 'Latin Rite'. There were also Jewish families, but so far I have found no trace of them in these records.

NOT_LEGITIMATE
Many children are recorded as having no father (parens ignotus). Occasionally the father is known but the child is still marked as illegitimate.

It appears that the majority (or a significant number) of the illegitimate children did not survive to adulthood. Those who did, continued to be mentioned as illegitimate years later in the birth and marriage records of their legitimate children.

ANNOTATION
Any extraneous information that the priests recorded, such as 'twins' (gemini, occasionally gemelli) or whether the child later died (gestorben, German for 'deceased').

Data entry of this field is incomplete and I hope to return to it later. There are sometimes extensive legalistic notes about child support and permissions granted from courts that oversaw the activities of orphans and soldiers.

CONDITIO
Latin for condition, occupation, social status, etc. This field is also incomplete.

Most of the people recorded in these registers were agricola, incola, or rusticus, which all refer to farming, and could indicate different status in the old feudal hierarchy, although these terms were not applied consistently.

scultetus was a village title roughly coinciding with 'mayor'. In feudal times, this was the peasant who dealt directly with the lord of the manor. It appears to have been a hereditary title, and the daughter of a scultetus is often referred to as sculteta at the time of her marriage.

dominus, domnus, nobilis referred to the local szlachta or gentry, originally the land-owning class. The surname most frequently associated with these terms is Wisłocki.

singarus, singara These terms referred to the Roma people, or 'gypsies'. Their children are almost always marked as illegitimate, even though the father was known and the parents likely regarded themselves as married. They rarely have a house number. We suspect there was a significant Roma presence near, but perhaps not in, these villages. The most common Roma surname in these records is Sywak.

MOTHER_MOTHER_*, FATHER_MOTHER_*, etc.
The Birth and Marriage records often contain valuable pedigree information and this is helpful in tracing families across the years. The meaning behind the field names is:

MOTHER_MOTHER Maternal grandmother.

MOTHER_FATHER Maternal grandfather.

FATHER_MOTHER Paternal grandmother.

FATHER_FATHER Paternal grandfather.

RELATIVE1_*, RELATIVE2_*
These appear in the Death records because the death register format provides no standardized way to indicate a person's family relationships, as there is in the Birth records. Sometimes a person's mother is indicated, sometimes father, spouse, or grandparent, some combination of the above, or none at all. The RELATIVE1_TYPE and RELATIVE2_TYPE columns specify which relationship is intended, and this is often essential for identifying the deceased.

DEATH_CAUSE, DEATH_NOTES
These only appear in the Deaths file. DEATH_CAUSE is the priest's attempt to record the cause of death, which is frequently unhelpful. naturalis and ordinaria are maddeningly frequent even in cases where there is clearly an epidemic or famine taking place. DEATH_NOTES is used to provide further information, such as if the person died away from home.

URL
This is a link to the scanned page that is hosted on the website of the Polish National Archives.

CATALOG_NO
Every record in this database has a unique identifier that is constructed off of the page's Polish National Archives Accession Number (part of the file name of the scanned page, see URL above) combined with a two-digit number representing the record's ordinal place on the page.