A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve 2014., Új folyam 1. (Szeged, 2014)

TÖRTÉNETTUDOMÁNY - T. Knotik Márta: Szél Antal hajóács családja és birtokszámaik (1670-1932)

Márta T. Knotik

Family and Houses of Shipwright Antal Szél (1670-1922)

Family and Houses of Shipwright Antal Szél

(1670-1922)

Márta T. Knotik

Very limited and at times invalid data are available on the history of the house of the Szél family from the time of the Great Flood of Szeged (1879]. The house was located at 7 Hajós street in the Fölsőváros part of Szeged. The author of present study used church registers as a source to solve the mentioned uncertainties. Surveying the registers of birth, marriages, and death of Fölsőváros, Palánk (ie. downtown), also that of Alsóváros, she was able to discover the continuity of the family from the first decades of the 20th century.

In order to discover the location of the houses owned by the family, the author collected the street-numbers mentioned in registers. The first map providing street numbers was created by Antal Balia in 1776-77. Balia restarted the numbering of the houses in every district of the town, and wrote not only the number of the house on the map, but also the owner of every plot. Due to the small sizes of

the plots in Palánk he did not follow this rule in that part of the map. It is possible that the 1828 census of the town was based on Balia's map. The next map providing a basis for the cadastral register was created by Antal Giba in 1841- 44. Though there were attempts to change the old house numbering dating back to the 1850s, Balia’s and Giba's map was used by the town authorities until the late 1860s. The house numbering which restarted in every town district and which was used from 1859 until the Great Flood (1879) can be found in the registers created after the flood (ie. List of the flood victims, List of the survived and destroyed houses). The new house numbering used from 1879 can be found in the Building Register.

The research focusing on the collection of church registration records of the Szél family and that of the numbers of their houses provided a perfect opportunity to summarize the history of house numbering in Szeged as well.

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