Prałkowce: Jakusz of Prawkowce in 1436, 38 years before the “first mention”

The entry, as printed

Datum in Przemisl feria secunda proxima post festum sancti Francisci anno etc. XXX sexto. Presentibus Budkone de Zaborze Pincerna Przemisliensi, Iohanne de Grochowcze filio [Iudicis], Nicolao Swinka, Iacussio de Prawkowcze et Nicolao do Byeliczsko.

In English

Given at Przemyśl on the Monday after the feast of St Francis, in the year [14]36. In the presence of Budek of Zaborze, cupbearer of Przemyśl, Jan of Grochowce, the judge’s son, Mikołaj Świnka, Jakusz of Prawkowce and Mikołaj of Byeliczsko.

The first book of the Przemyśl land

The oldest surviving book of the Przemyśl land court begins in 1436. The court sat in Przemyśl several times a year, and the clerk wrote down in Latin whatever the gentry wanted on public record: debts, dowries, sales of villages, boundary quarrels. Under each important entry he named the witnesses, the people present who could later confirm that the business really took place.

The book was printed in Lwów in 1888, in volume XIII of the “Akta grodzkie i ziemskie”. Our entry is on its first pages.

Jakusz of Prawkowce, 8 October 1436

On the Monday after St Francis in 1436, Jan Mzurowski bound himself to pay his son-in-law a hundred marks of dowry. Among the witnesses the clerk named the cupbearer of Przemyśl, Budek of Zaborze, Jan of Grochowce, the judge’s son, Mikołaj Świnka and “Iacussio de Prawkowcze”, Jakusz of Prawkowce.

A nobleman “of” a village is its owner or one of its owners. So in 1436 Prawkowce had a lord who lived there and rode to the court sessions in Przemyśl. The village existed at least 38 years before 1474, the year from which Wikipedia counts its history.

Prawkowce, not “washing places”

Wikipedia derives the name Prałkowce from bleaching and washing places said to have stood here once. In the 15th century the name sounds different. In some eighty entries of the Przemyśl court books the clerks write Prawkowcze, Prakowcze, once Pracowcze, and never once the letter “ł”.

That does not tell us where the name really comes from. The records are silent on it, and it is a question for linguists. But the washing-place explanation was made up once the name already had its later form.

A manor to be left a week after Christmas

Fifteenth-century Prawkowce was a village of petty gentry, split into shares. On 19 June 1449 Katarzyna and her husband Strzeczon ceded the manor in Prawkowce, “where they themselves live”, to Symko and his stepson Jerzy. They could stay until the coming Christmas, and had to move out within a week after the feast. The clerk wrote the penalty in Polish, among the Latin: “pycznadyescz”, fifteen.

Twenty years later, on 16 March 1468, Mikosz of Prawkowce sold “the whole building of the late Symko” for one mark and an ox. He kept for himself the little ponds, the orchard below the bathhouse and the small garden in front of the manor.

How we know it is this Prałkowce

The Prawkowce of the Przemyśl books neighbours Grochowce, Ostrów, Kruhel and Śliwnica, the villages that still surround Prałkowce today. In the same entry of 1449 Symko pledges “his village of Kruhel”.

The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland drew the same conclusion back in 1883. Quoting the 1474 entry about “Krizic de Prawkowce”, the author added in brackets: “that is, Prałkowce”. So 1474 is not the first mention, only the first one someone copied into a dictionary.

Sources

• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XIII (Lwów, 1888), p. 15, no. 102 (8 October 1436).
• Ibid., p. 293, nos. 4000–4001 (19 June 1449); p. 570, no. 6972 (16 March 1468).
• Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego, vol. IV (Warsaw, 1883), entry “Kruhel”.

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