The 18th Century Town Family. Family Law Acts Concerning Moscow Merchants and Commoners

The publication includes more than 380 family law documents discovered in the 18th century archives and related to representatives of Moscow unprivileged classes. Among them are testaments, church records of baptism, marriage and divorce and other civil states concerning merchants, the minor and the major orders, clerks, all kind of commoners (‘raznochintsy’): retired soldiers, doctors, pharmacists, etc.), including members of the corporation of foreign merchants and the local guild merchants and their descendants as well as foreigners at large. The large array of family-law documents now being introduced into scientific research contains unique information about the division of family property, marital obligations, accession to heirship and inheritance, conjugal relations, parent- child relations, child-rearing, care for the old and the disabled, spiritual salvation and charity. They reflect the ways of domestic life and its material and spiritual values.

For historians and a wide range of readers.