Inwentarze pośmiertne i działy spadkowe ludności wiejskiej klucza pelplińskiego. Z dziejów kultury materialnej i praktyki prawnej w Prusach Królewskich w XVIII wieku

Posthumous inventories and inheritance sections constitute one of the most important sources in the research on social-economic history. The richness and variety of information included there allows their use in the analysis of a wide spectrum of problems: from the questions of production and consumption, down to the problems of wealth, the increase in prices, ways to spend money or the practical dimension of the legal rules. Its advantage is its mass availability and a relatively objective full record of wealth heritage presented in an official clerical form. The aim of the article is to join the research on inheritance among the rural population in the Pelplin fiefdom, to show the practical enforcement of inheritance law and to outline the material conditions of life of its inhabitants. The following were analyzed: the circumstances of drawing inventories in the monastery (legal significance, participants, appraisers), the layout of documents, elements of contents, the manner the inventory was conducted and the final share of inheritance (the so-called Chełmno half, the status of the main inheritor, the heirship of women, inheriting movables and inmovables). The research comprises the questions concerning ownership, inmovables (residential buildings, outbuildings) and movables (animal inventory, household facilities, household equipment) which were part of the analyzed estates, as well as the problem of debts of the population reflected in the source. The author used about 50 representative posthumous inventories and inheritance registers from the 18th century, collected in the Diocese Archive in Pelplin. The author also used the contracts of life-annuity, last wills, act of transferring the ownership of farms and inspection, sale contracts, which complement the inventories. In total the sources used by the author consisted of a few hundred documents mainly from the archive of the Monastica group.