Velykyi Khodachkiv is on record 254 years earlier: a “deserted village” in 1504

The entry, as printed

1380. In conventione generali Piotrkoviensi, f. 6 ante Oculi (8 mar.). Rex testificatur Henricum alias Endrich Michowski, curiensem regium, fortalitium et oppidum regale Bvcznyowa cum villis desertis alias przyschyolkj pustimy Chodeczkow, Donamywcze, Dluga Dolyna et cum superiori Bucznyowa circumadiacentibus, ad praedictum fortalitium cum oppido spectantibus, tenutae suae, ac summam, in eisdem bonis inscriptam, Ioanni et Victorino de Syenno, fratribus germanis, de voluntate et consensu regali resignasse. MD. XIX, 151.

In English

No. 1380. At the general diet in Piotrków, on the Friday before Oculi Sunday (8 March). The king attests that Henryk, otherwise Endrich, Michowski, a royal courtier, with the king’s will and consent handed over to the brothers Jan and Wiktoryn of Sienno the royal stronghold and town of Buczniów with the deserted villages, or deserted hamlets, Khodachkiv, Domamorych, Dovha Dolyna and Upper Buczniów, which lie around and belong to the said stronghold and town — his tenure, together with the sum recorded on these estates.

1758: the date in the reference books

Of Velykyi Khodachkiv, Wikipedia says: “The first written mention dates from 1758.” The regional encyclopedia “Ternopil Region: A History of Its Towns and Villages” gives the same year. The website of the Pidhorodne hromada, by contrast, says the first written mention “dates from 1504”, but names no source; a book on castles also gives 1504 without a reference. Wikipedia also retells an old legend, written down in 1786, that the village grew up around a tavern at a crossroads.

Which document stands behind 1504 has never been said. Here it is: the royal books know Khodachkiv two and a half centuries before 1758. At the time it stood empty.

8 March 1504: a stronghold and its deserted hamlets

On that day, at the general diet in Piotrków, King Alexander attested a transfer of an estate. His courtier Henryk, otherwise Endrich, Michowski, with the king’s consent, handed over his tenure to the brothers Jan and Wiktoryn of Sienno. A tenure was a royal estate held by a nobleman, usually as security for money the crown owed him.

The tenure was “the royal stronghold and town of Buczniów with the deserted villages, or deserted hamlets, Khodachkiv, Domamorych, Dovha Dolyna and Upper Buczniów, which lie around it”. The clerk did not rely on Latin alone: next to “villae desertae” he wrote the local words, “przyschyolkj pustimy”, “deserted hamlets”.

How we know it is Velykyi Khodachkiv

There are two Khodachkivs in the Ternopil region, and the neighbours decide. Buczniów is today’s Butsniv on the Seret, and Wikipedia’s article on Butsniv itself mentions 1504. The “Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland” says Velykyi Khodachkiv lies on a stream that joins the Seret “below the village of Buczniów”; Butsniv is ten kilometres away. Domamorych and Dovzhanka (the old Dovha Dolyna) lie seven and nine kilometres north of Velykyi Khodachkiv.

Malyi Khodachkiv lies thirty kilometres to the east, on the Kachava near Velyki Birky, and did not belong to Butsniv. It too is in the royal books, in 1530, as “Khodechkiv on the Terebna river”, among the villages around Birky. And later, according to Wikipedia, Khodachkiv, with Domamorych and Dovzhanka, belonged to the Butsniv starostwo: the same district as in 1504.

Why the village stood empty

The 1504 entry gives no reason. But in the same years the royal chancery repeatedly freed burned towns of Ruthenia from taxes: at the same diet of 1504, Kańczuga, “burned by the Turks and Tatars”; in 1506, the town of Terebovlia, “laid waste by the Tatars”, and the nobles of the Terebovlia district. Most likely the Butsniv estate suffered in the same raids. That, though, is a guess, not the testimony of the document.

What matters more is this: a deserted village is not a new one. To be left empty, it must once have been settled. So Khodachkiv existed before 1504. When exactly it was founded, these documents do not say.

What came next

Over the next years the king several times allowed Butsniv, a royal pledge, to be redeemed from its previous holder: in 1510, 1511 and 1515. In 1529 the king gave “the town of Buczniów, and also the settlers and peasants” ten years’ freedom from taxes and labour, the usual way of helping a place rebuild. About the people of Khodachkiv itself these entries are silent.

So between the deserted hamlet of 1504 and the village of 1758 lie two and a half centuries about which the documents say almost nothing. Perhaps memory kept something: the names of fields and tracts, stories of the tavern at the crossroads. Those who remember them know more than the documents.

Sources

• Matricularum Regni Poloniae summaria, part III (1501–1506), p. 87, no. 1380 (8.03.1504; Crown Register, book 19, fol. 151).
• Ibid., p. 87, no. 1390 (Kańczuga, 1504); p. 167, nos. 2546 and 2549, p. 181, no. 2803 (Terebovlia, 1506).
• Matricularum Regni Poloniae summaria, part IV, vol. 1 (1507–1548), p. 58, no. 992; p. 63, no. 1060; p. 140, no. 2408; p. 320, no. 5434 (Butsniv, 1510–1529).
• Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego, vol. I (Warsaw, 1880), p. 604, entry “Chodaczków wielki”.

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