Marriage location: an attempt to reconstruct the histories of rural families in Romny district of the Poltava province in the first half of the 19th century

Abstract

It was made an attempt to show the marriage location of rural families in the Romny district of the Poltava province in the first half of the 19th century, to highlight individual examples of matrimonial unions of the patrilocal, matrilocal and intermediate location types, to point out possible family movements during the existence of matrimonies. The materials of marriage searches and confessional murals, to reproduce the stories of individual rural families, and the story of one - Sisoy Stefanova Bartosh, to present in the context of the change of three generations over 110 years were used. Other issues also be disclosed: features of population registration by priests in church documentation; the conceptual apparatus of historical and demographic nature, which the author uses, the gender-age differences of entry into the first family union; possible causes that affected the movement of families; the time period of the creation and existence of families; the social origin of the spouses; the age difference between the spouses; the repeated marriage rate, the number of children; the age intervals between childbirth, and also between the wedding and the birth of the firstborn; anthroponymic features and etc. The study showed that the patrilocal prevailed, matrilocal and families of intermediate location type were few in number; movements of families of different social groups; marital status could change during family growth and it is associated with demographic processes, primarily, population, structural and typological changes in communities, as well as natural, that is, those that occurred in the family environment, in particular, in childbirth, marriage or mortality; the movement of families could be influenced by socio-economic processes occurring in the rural community and etc. The age difference between the spouses ranged from one to eight years, and the largest was 23 years. The interstitial interval between children ranged from 2 to 5 years.