With the advent of Christianity and the emergence of the official church, life in villages and villages has always raged around local churches, it was the cultural life of the inhabitants of the villages and the education of children and the spirituality of man. Everything that happened in the village of birth, marriage, baptism and death was recorded in church parish books. Until 1918, officially, all acts were conducted by the church until the “Code of Acts on the Acts of Civil Status” was issued;
The very shelf life of metric books is about one hundred years, in each country differently. After they are sent to the archives. To date, not a few parish books and metrics have been preserved, but still most of them were destroyed along with churches or burned in fires, since wooden churches were built or church libraries were burned by the Bolsheviks.
The form and structure of metric books
The entry in the register was kept by hand. Each metric book consists of three parts or sections: “On the Born”, “On the Marriage”, “On the Dead”. Each of them has its own characteristics and is of independent interest in the study of metrics as historical and genealogical sources.
Account of births
It was conducted in two columns separately for male and female children, according to the funded system for a year. At the end of the year, the total number of babies born was obtained, confirmed by the signatures of the abbot, church attendants and the dean.
Month and day
They were recorded in two columns – a separate “birthday”, a separate “baptism day”. The difference between the days was usually from one to three days.
Names of births
In this column, the name given at baptism was recorded. Sometimes, next to the name in brackets was the “foundling” or “illegitimate.”
Weddings (weddings)
Committed, as a rule, at the place of residence of the groom. In this part, the names of the spouses were recorded separately in the format “name of the groom (bride), title and patronymic of the father by which marriage (in a row) is combined.”
Deadline
The counting of the dead was carried out as for those who were born – separately for men and women, and were conducted consistently throughout the year. The last entry summarized the total number of dead male and female souls.
In the next section, the month and the day of death and burial were recorded in two columns.
Good luck in finding.
