Staryi Nyzhbirok was a town by 1480, though reference books start its history in 1554

The entry, as printed

Nobil. Nicolaus Kyerdey heres de Orynyn emit apud famos. Benessium Helbasz civem Leopol. bellam panni kyerthvchow viginti quinque stamina in se continentem, quodlibet stamen panni per tres flor. cum medio Vngar., quam summam ad f. Ascensionis Domi. prox. bovibus, quemlibet bovem pensando per unam marc. minus tribus grossis valentibus alias varvnkovych iuxta taxam inter mercatores habitam, reponere est obligatus sub intromissione in opidum Antiquum Niczborg et in piscinam ac molendinum sub eodem opido erectis.

In English

The noble Mikołaj Kierdej, heir of Orynyn, bought from the honourable Benesz Helbasz, burgher of Lviv, a bale of “kertuch” cloth holding twenty-five pieces, each piece at three and a half Hungarian florins. He is bound to repay this sum by the next Ascension in oxen, each ox reckoned at one mark less three groats, at the price agreed among merchants, on pain of [the creditor’s] entry into the town of Old Niżborg, and into the pond and the mill built below that town.

Two dates and a story about a forest

On the Taina river, a few kilometres from Kopychyntsi, stand two villages with one name: Staryi (Old) Nyzhbirok and Nyzhbirok, called Novyi (New) until 1966. Wikipedia starts the written history of Staryi Nyzhbirok in 1554 and of Nyzhbirok in 1564. For anything earlier there is only a tale: people once moved here from a “lower forest”.

The records know Nyzhbirok at least three quarters of a century earlier. And they know it not as a village, but as a town.

Fish from the ponds, 1477

On 6 June 1477 the nobleman Mikołaj Kierdej “of Niżborg” came before the Lviv castle court. He acknowledged that he had sold to two Lviv craftsmen, Matiaszek and Wawrzyniec, cloth-shearers, the draining of his two fishponds in Niżborg. The ponds were to be drained the next autumn, and the price was forty marks. Kierdej had already taken half in advance, as the clerk wrote, as a “deposit”.

A pond was drained once every few years, and the fish were gathered and taken to market. The catch from the Taina ponds was bought in advance all the way from Lviv, nearly two hundred kilometres away. So the ponds were large, and the estate around them was not new.

“The town of Old Niżborg”, 1480

Three years later the same Mikołaj Kierdej, now “heir of Orynyn”, stands before the Lviv land court. He had bought from the Lviv burgher Benesz Helbasz a bale of twenty-five pieces of cloth and must pay by Ascension in oxen, each ox valued “at the price agreed among merchants”. If he fails, the creditor takes possession of the pledge. And the pledge is “the town of Old Niżborg, and the pond and the mill built below that town”.

So in 1480 Staryi Nyzhbirok was a town (in Latin, opidum) with a pond and a mill. Reference books say nothing of this. The word “Old” itself means there was already another, newer Nyzhbirok. Perhaps today’s Nyzhbirok, but we found no direct record of it from those years, so this is only an inference from the name.

How we know it is our Nyzhbirok

The name Niczborg, Nieczbork or Niżborg is unique in Galicia and Podolia: the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland knows only New and Old Niżborg on the Taina, and nowhere else. The Kierdej family went on taking its name from the place: in 1511 the king allowed Zygmunt Kierdej “of Nyczbork” to redeem the royal village of Butsniv from the starosta of Terebovlia.

In 1564 the tax register of Terebovlia district lists “Nyeczbork” as a village of two owners: 18 peasant households in Krampski’s share, 14 households, a priest, four cottagers and two craftsmen in Orzechowski’s. It says nothing of a town.

What remains open

We do not know when or why Staryi Nyzhbirok stopped being a town: after the Tatar raids of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, so visible in nearby Butsniv and Terebovlia, or whether the clerk of 1564 simply did not mention it. Nor do we know where exactly the ponds of 1477 and the mill of 1480 stood.

The answer may survive in the names of fields, tracts and old dams along the Taina. Those who remember them may know more than the documents do.

Sources

• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XVII (Lviv, 1901), p. 440, no. *3656 (Lviv castle court, 6.06.1477).
• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XV (Lviv, 1891), p. 511, no. *4041 (Lviv land court, 1480).
• Matricularum Regni Poloniae summaria, part IV, vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1910), p. 72, no. 1217 (3.07.1511).
• A. Jabłonowski, Źródła dziejowe, vol. XVIII, part 1 (Warsaw, 1902), p. 99: the 1564 register of Terebovlia district.
• Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego, vol. VII (Warsaw, 1886), pp. 168–169, entries “Niżborg Nowy” and “Niżborg Stary”.

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