Forrai Ibolya szerk.: Néprajzi Közlemények 32. évfolyam - Besenyőtelki életutak, A századforduló szülöttei (Budapest, 1990)

Summary - Path of life in Besenyőtelek - Born at the turn of the century (P. Szuhay E. Örszigethy)

SUMMARY Path of life in Besenyőtelek - Born at the turn of the century Between 1983 and 1985 a team worked in Besenyőtelek as part of the program of the Museum of Ethnography to do a monographyc curvey on local societies. That group made history, ethnography and sociological studies to investigate the development of local society after the resettlement of the population following the Turkish occupation of the village up to the most recent period. The present study is a mid-term result of the history of the village on the level of the individuals, of the families. Besenyőtelek is a village situated in Heves county where the Northern Mountain Range meets the Great Hungarian Plain. The village had been resettled in 1663 when the Szabó family took the Bessenyő and Tepély holdings from the Besenyei family as security, and obtained proprietary rights over the holding of 8 000 „hold" (Hungarian land measure of 0,57 hectares) with regal approval. Due to family successions Bessenyő puszta (hamlet) soon became a village with sizeable population, inhabited mostly by the Catholic nobility. After the 1730-es the village was administered by the landed gentry, composed by the three lines of the Szabó family in equal proportions. The landlords of the village concluded a transaction in 1769 to regulate life in the village legally also. In the first half of the 19-th century they still had a dual structure in the village. In the economy: in the division of land in the use of pasture land the parentetic principle prevailed, that is the family lines operated independently, separated from one another in farming or in managing their organisations, including the pasturing association which had as its members noble and common people. However in administration these were separated: nobility had a „director" and the peasants a village mayor. The duality of political and economic power ended unambiguously in the years of 1870-1880. The frames of the economy has changed. In the 1870-es the power conditions were restructured on the principles of wealth. Land had been replotted between 1873 and 1875: several landed classes were