Friday, June 29, 2018

Mapping The Addresses of Burgenland Austro/Hungarian Ancestors

Now that I've visited the village of Inzenhof, Austria where my grandfather Rudolph Kapple, and many of our ancestors had lived, I am more curious about their living situation. How close were the houses where my ancestral couples lived before they married? The early houses were all fairly close together, but some were a block or two away from the others. Below you can see the village of Inzenhof from an aerial view. All of the early homes were mainly clustered near the present Kurta Gasthaus, Fire Department, and School.

I would think everyone in such a small village would have known one another, but there were about 600 people living there when my ancestors lived there. Even with a smaller population, now around 300, not everyone knows each other as I discovered on my visit. I was thinking proximity probably played a role when it came to the marriages of my ancestors? Were they neighbors?

I had no way to plot out the addresses of my ancestors until Werner at the Official Facebook Burgenland Group provided me with some links to GEO Data sites. I used the GEO Daten Burgeland site to plot the addresses of my ancestors, and their neighbors in Inzenhof:

How close did the couples live to marriage partners?

They were not next door neighbors as I was thinking. Here you see Christian Koppel and Marie Bierbauer who married in 1876; they lived a block or two away from each other.

My great-grandparents Frank Kappel and Maria Kurta married in 1898 in Pennsylvania. They both were from Inzenhof, but weren't next door neighbors either.

Maria Kurta-Kappel's parents lived about the same distance apart as the other couples, not next door neighbors either.

Even though the couples didn't live next door they did live in the same village. Interesting that they tended to marry within the same village even though other villages were close by. Maybe it's because each village had its own church? Since the principle gathering place was the church for events and masses that is likely where people got to know more distant neighbors, and these couples met. Also I am thinking if I traced the extended families I would find a web of relationships with neighbors I'm not familiar with. These relationships probably also led to matches with more distant neighbors. I'm not sure about how much schooling my family had? They likely would also have met contemporaries at school if they attended?

I also used the GEO Data site to mark some of the Inzenhof houses. I mainly used the village list at the Burgenland Bunch website. It's been interesting getting to know the village better.

Mid 19th Century Inzenhof Village Tenants 

The Geo Data map shows house numbers in blue, and what seem to be tract numbers for the land in white. I added the names from the village list dating from around 1859.

It's interesting to compare the names of villagers in 1720 with these later descendants. You can view the 1720 Census list for Borosgodor here.

No comments: