Kenderes Summary
Kenderes
Summary
Summary
The vicinity of the settlement lying in the middle of Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county was populated during the Copper and the Bronze Ages according to the archaeological findings: the elevations free of inundation, and covered with loess between empty river beds and mortlakes were occupied by the Sarmatians and the Gepids. The blackearth and Rhetic type soils offered favourable conditions for the early creation of earth tilling. Although the settlement lies on the border of the driest small regions of the country, the average annual rainfall is still higher than in the neighbouring villages.
The area was occupied by the Bő dynasty at the time of the Hungarian settlement. They were the attendants of the kende, the religious leader of the Hungarians. The village mentioned first as Kenderes or Kér in a charter in 1352, got to the ownership of the Kumans, and later in the XV century, one third of it was owned by the Bő family again, one third by Pál Kovári, royal prothonotary, and one third by the Paulits of Buda. One of the Kováries’ relatives in Upper Hungary propagated Hussite premises on the estate on the Great Hungarian Plain, and as Balázs Kenderessy, a new owner of the settlement now having the right of a borough, also became a follower of these premises, this place became one of the nodal points of the Hussite movement by the middle of the XV century.
The village suffered a lot from the devastation caused by the Turkish-Mongolian troops in the second half of the XVII century, and it was plundered by the Serbs during the Rákóczi freedom fight. After the peace treaty at Szatmár, two third of the village was inherited by general Sándor Károlyi, but one third still remained with the Paulits. The Károlyi part or by a different name, the Duke’s part was temporarily controlled by János Hódosy, the organiser of the re-settlement, and later by the dukes Forgács and Haller. In Bánhalma and Kakatpuszta, the Borbélys obtained the estate, which was later inherited by the Magyary-Kozák family, and then by the Horthy family from Nagybánya in the middle of the XIX century. The land property of the Order of St. Paul, dissolved in 1784, was transferred to the ownership of the Catholic religious fund and the Hungarian chamber, and later it became less and less important as it was sold bit by bit.
In the last third of the XVIII century, the dutchess Krisztina Kornis Mrs. Haller settled Catholic people on the Károlyi part. The influx of the poor population continued in the first half of the XIX century, and basically changed local social and religious conditions. During the settlement in relation to the serfs in 1771, the still wealthy, almost exclusively Calvinist serf village became a partly Catholic settlement with a high number of cottars and poor peasants by the time of the 1848 revolution, where only few people and serfs had larger land areas.
Social differentiation continued, but no major industry or trade came into being. The railway line between Szolnok and Debrecen avoided Kenderes in 1857, which shortfall could not be compensated even by the branch line built between Kisújszállás, Kál and Kápolna in 1887. It was, however, a favourable factor that due to the total flood protection of the area, the arable land area doubled between 1852 and 1879, and by 1935, it reached 75 percent of the agricultural area. Land distribution, however, was still disproportionate, and not even the land reform of Nagyatád could modify that significantly.
The settlement showed a visible development between the two world wars even though there was a high proportion of poor people. Thanks to the passionate support by Miklós Horthy, who was born in the village, there were public buildings, schools built, watermains and electricity network erected, modern health care and social care supplied.
As the most severe social problem, the issue of land was not solved, the land reform of 1945, and the total partition of large estates, among others the Horthy estate, temporarily made the peasants stand by the Communist Party. That is how it could happen that during the national elections in 1945, the Communist Party received the highest level of support in this village next to the upper Tisza, the village of the former governor. The new power, taking shape soon resulted in a disillusioned population. In addition to resentments in connection with the co-operative organisations, and produce deliveries to the state, probably the positive memories of the Horthy era also played a role in the fact that the revolution in 1956 took a more radical form in Kenderes than in other settlements in Szolnok county.
After the 1960-ies, the village again showed the signes of resilient development. The Plant Protection Station founded in 1954 had a regional authority, and smaller industrial jobs were created, but due to the fact that yound people moved out of the settlement, it population was continuously diminishing.
In Bánhalma, the most important populated place in the outskirts of the village, there is one of the oldest transport historic monuments in Hungary, a stone column with a Latin lettering at the Kakat bridge. In the village, which used to have two centres before, there are no signs left of the original settlement structure, and there are only two buildings with the typical fold traditions. The front wall of the house in Jókai str. 3, is decorated by a large white cross, and the house under no. 7 is decorated by the images of the sund and the moon. The population does not preserve any folk costume or folk art traditions, but some of the folk traditions are still remembered by the elderly. It was a broadly spread custom, for instance, there was a joke, that the way before the bridal procession was blocked with a rope made of hay or bad hurds, and the bridegroom had to cut it. Anoher custom in Kenderes is pursued during the dinner on pig-killing days, when some merry neighbours appear at the dinner-table disguised. The remnants of witchcraft were alive even in the XX century, fear from bewitchment and the evil eye, which disappeared fully only during the last decades from the consciousness of the local people.
The fame of Kenderes is mainly due to its son, governor Miklós Horthy. The evaluation of Horthy’s political carreer is the subject of historic and publicist debates, which are raised time and again not free from passions. In order to objectively evaluate him, however, it is indispensible to get familiar with his positive and warm relationship with his parent village and the simple people, and hopefully our volume may also provide some information for that.
