The demographic history of Mesztegnyő based on 18th century clerical sources

Abstract

The studies of resettlement and demographic history after the Ottoman occupation, which have yielded hardly satisfactory results, encouraged research to focus on micro studies of small areas, manors or a single source or type of source. These studies mainly examine and compare in detail official clerical documents, birth, marriage and death certificates, as well as canonical visitations and family histories (historia domus), which cover the entire population of a given period and allow for comparison. My study focuses on the 18th century population of Mesztegnyő in the context of the above-described research. Of the available sources, I examined those official 18th-century church records, which were kept continuously and apparently with great accuracy for more than fifty years, and which recorded details of occasional residents of other religions as well.
In short, the population of Mesztegnyő in the 18th century shows the picture of a newly populated, young settlement. In addition to intensive migration, the slow settling of newcomers can be clearly observed. Some of the surviving sources (the visitations) record a snapshot for a particular year, which could be more or less further interpreted and differentiated with the data from the church registers.