Średnia in 1502: Hryniowa Wola in the forests of burned Krzywcza

The entry, as printed

Nobil. Alexander Orzechowsky proposuit super nobiles Bernhardinum, Derslaum et Nicolaum fratres germ. indivisos heredes de Crzywcza … pro eo, quia vos locatis et de novo extirpatis villam Hrynyova Volya sic dictam in silvis hereditariis opidi Crzywcza…

In English

The nobleman Aleksander Orzechowski brought a claim against the noblemen Bernardyn, Dziersław and Mikołaj, full brothers with undivided property, heirs of Krzywcza … because you are settling and newly clearing the village called Hryniowa Wola in the hereditary forests of the little town of Krzywcza…

“In the year after the burning by the Turks”

On 1 March 1502 the nobleman Aleksander Orzechowski came before the Przemyśl land court. He had bought a third of the little town of Krzywcza with its forests from the late Rafał of Krzywcza, and now he was suing Rafał’s sons Bernardyn, Dziersław and Mikołaj. The brothers were selling oaks from the town forests to outsiders but refusing him: “you forbid my townsmen of the same Krzywcza to cut and cart oaks for building in the year after the burning by the Turks and the destruction of the said town”.

So shortly before 1502 Krzywcza had been burned and destroyed by the Turks, and the townsmen were rebuilding from the oak forest. The entry does not give the year of the raid. Most likely it was the great Turkish raid on Red Ruthenia in 1498, but that is our reading.

A village being “newly cleared”

The same day Orzechowski brought a second claim: the brothers were “settling and newly clearing the village called Hryniowa Wola in the hereditary forests of the town of Krzywcza” and would not share it with him, although a third of the forests was his.

The brothers answered that Hryniowa Wola stood on the forests of Wola Krzywiecka, which their father had never sold to Orzechowski. The village “was settled by the late Mikołaj Chabr, our uncle, and our father held it in peace for more than thirty years”. So it existed at least from the early 1470s. Orzechowski replied that he was not talking about what had been settled long ago, but about what had been “newly cleared” in a forest of which he owned a third. And the brothers added a sentence that says a lot: they would prove their purchase of Wola Krzywiecka from the court books, “because our charters are lost”.

“Hryniowa Wola, called Średnia”

Two months later, on 4 May 1502, the parties settled. The agreement ends with the words: the brothers “may settle the village of Hryniowa Wola, called Średnia”. This is the earliest mention of the present name known to us.

In the tax register of 1515 Hryniowa Wola has 4 łans and a mill. And on 3 November 1539 the chamberlain Jan Herburt walked the boundary “by the edge of the village of Średnia, otherwise Hryniowa Wola”, where “three old triangular mounds” marked the bounds of Średnia, Korytniki and Wapowce. The two names lived side by side for at least forty years, until one remained: Średnia.

What we do not know

We do not know whom the name “Hryniowa” comes from, perhaps a Hryń, the first settler, but the records do not say. Nor do we know for certain whether the brothers’ charters burned with the town.

What is certain is what can be read on the pages: Średnia is the old Hryniowa Wola, settled by Mikołaj Chabr more than thirty years before 1502 and cleared anew after the raid that burned Krzywcza. The triangular boundary mounds of 1539 on the border with Korytniki and Wapowce are a good place to start looking for traces on the ground.

Sources

• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XVIII (Lwów, 1903), pp. 433–434, nos. 2976–2977 (1 March 1502); p. 553, no. 4064 (4 May 1502).
• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XIX (Lwów, 1906), p. 601 (3 November 1539).
• A. Jabłonowski, Źródła dziejowe, vol. XVIII, pt. 1 (Warsaw, 1902): tax register of the land of Przemyśl, 1515.

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