Sióagárd Summary
Sióagárd
Summary
Summary
Sióagárd lies on the table-land between Sárvíz and the Sió, in the Southern corner of Mezőföld, in Tolna county, eight kilometres from Szekszárd.
The favourable geographical conditions, and mostly the water of the Sár played a dominant role in the settlement of the people, and the creation
of the village thousands of years later. During the Middle Ages, developed water management was carried out, under the Turkish rule, however, the landscape became a moorland, and tilling of arable land moved into the background. The regulation of water became pressing by the middle of the XVIII. century, work, however, - often because of the resistance of the counties and villages – was prolonged for more than a hun-dred years.
The earliest archaeological relics are from the neolithic age, and later, near-ly all archaeological cultures left behind some relics in the area which admin-istratively, belongs to Sióagárd today. The quantity and nature of the relics, however, excludes any such possibility that the area was conti-nuously populated before the Hungarian Settlement.
The beginning of the development that lasts up till now is to be dated at the time when the medieval village was formed. We have very scarce sources from the time of the settlement. We can only be sure that the settlement emerged during the age of the Arpads; this is confirmed both by documents and archaeological data. In the centuries before the Turkish rule, the village most probably was owned by the Abbey in Szekszárd, and/or the Agari, Agárdy family. The most important legacy from the early Middle Ages is the name of the settlement, for the origin of which, archaeologists offer two solutions. According to one, the name of Agárd comes from a diminu-tive version of a personal name, and according to the other one, it roots in “ágár”, an old Hungarian word of ours, the meaning of which is “shallow overgrown with willows”.
The one hundred and fifty years of Turkish rule caused irreparable dam-age in the development of the village. According to Turkish tax registers, the settlement could survive quite easily the first decades of the Turkish occupation – in spite of military expeditions, and double taxation. The real blow came with the fifteen year war, which started in 1593. Hundreds of villages became depopulated during military operations. By the end of the XVII. century, Agárd also became a puszta, and its land was used by the farmers of the nearby Új-Palánk, where in the meantime, some Serbian farmers settled.
After the Turks were driven out, one of the most important tasks was to clarify ownership relations. There were three parties fighting for Agárd in front of the competent committee. Finally, Leopold I recognised the right of the Abbey in Szekszárd in 1703. The abbot in Szekszárt, the new/old owner started to re-populate the depopulated village imme-diately. According to some old census, people once again started to settle in Agárd in 1715, with a 100% Serbian population. A second wave of settlers arrived in the second half of the 1720-ies, Hungarians and Slovaks, who leaving behind the over-populated counties of Upper Northern Hungary, found their new home along the Sárvíz. Hungarians and Serbs did not have a long co-existence: the Serbian families left the settlement by the middle of the 1730-ies.
The number of inhabitants of the village multiplied during the one and a half centuries after the Hungarian population appeared: it was more than 1600 by the middle of the XIX. century. Due to the increased number of population, the conditions of farming changed because the available size of land could not any more provide the amount of crop necessary for a living with the earlier applied land exploitation method. From the method of leaving land uncultivated, a shift was made towards two-course rotation in the middle of the 1720-ies, and three-course rotation in the second half of the century. Plant production was the main source of living for the people in Agárd. In addition to wheat, maize was also grown. Vini-culture was an important additional source of income for the serfs, which they carried out not within the boundaries of their own settlement, but on the neighbouring hills around Szekszárd, Harc and Zomba. The devel-opment of animal husbandry was also driven by the requirements of plant production. In order to safely provide for draught-oxen, at the end of the XVIII. century, it was forbidden to keep sheep in the settlement abound-ing in rivers and scarce in space.
Maria Theresa introduced consistent regulation for plots of land held by serfs in 1767. The Charter regulating land held by serfs was taken on paper also in Agárd, in reality, however, a special agreement between the estate and serfs remained in effect for the following two decades. The Charter finally entered into effect in 1788, which was connected to the change in the ownership of the estate; Joseph II merged the property of the Abbey in Szekszárd into the Hungarian Royal Research Fund.
The revolution in 1848 abolished the feudal system of serving. After the issue of the Letters-Patent in 1853, the practical implementation of the abo-lition of serfdom could be started throughout the country, with its final completion to come several decades later. The former serfs in Agárd, who became free peasants initiated lengthy legal cases against the estate. The court’s decisions in most of the cases were in favour of the Research Fund.
After the Compromise in 1867, the accelerating capitalistic development had its losers as well. By the end of the century, the process by which land got subdivided into little fragments speeded up, thus, the number of those who owned small and tiny estates grew significantly. And, still, we cannot talk about a general impoverishment of the village. The wealthy medium land-owning peasantry restructured their farms successfully, meeting the requirements of the new era. Production became more and more intensive, crop rotation was started at around the end of the century, the proportion of animal feed was increased in plant production, and new wellyielding species of cattle were naturalized. After the phylloxera epidemic, vineyards were introduced on a large scale. Pepper production and its sales together with the stocks of surrounding villages started in the 1880-ies. Due to the extra revenue, the image of the village also changed. New houses were erected, the first buildings appeared with a civilian taste, the lines of streets were rearranged, artesian wells were bored. Telephones also started to ring at the beginning of the XX. century. This was the period when the cha-racteristic garment of Agárd also appeared, reflecting the taste and position of the wealthy medium peasantry. This, with the wine and the pepper became special peculiarities of the settlement.
The development starting after the Hungarian Compromise of 1867, was broken by the war and the revolutions. This was a huge sacrifice, even in terms of human life, eighty-three people fell in different front-lines. The period between the two wars does not belong to the most brilliant pages of the history of the settlement. The electrification of the settlement was not completed even after several attempts, and there was a delay in sup-plying hard coverage for roads. The bull-shed, important from the point of view of animal husbandry, and the construction of the doctor’s flat indis-pensable for the health care of the population were postponed several times. Agárd remained an agricultural type settlement even between the two world wars. There was not even a mill operating, only an exchange site estab-lished by the Bonyhád Hengermalom Részvénytársaság, thus the only industrial plant of the village was the brewery in the Leányvár. There was never any railway connection, but regular buses also avoided the village for a long time.
After 1945, the cooperative movement put an end to peasants’ farms, which had been the basic units of the economy and the society for centuries. With large-scale production methods, fewer and fewer workers were needed, and the attractive force of the nearby capital of the county became stronger and stronger due to the newly settling industries. The number of the inhabitants kept decreasing year by year. This process now seems to halt mostly because more and more people move out to the village, which is close to the town, rich in natural beauty and cultural tradition.
