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Skriv ut sidan - Hemadotter - Translation of word
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Titel: Hemadotter - Translation of word
Skrivet av: John Bentley skrivet 2012-01-14, 11:46
My view is that she was named as hemmadotter (unmarried daughter of the family) when moving away from her home farm, and piga (both meanings of maid) when returning. In early marriage records for country areas, girls were mainly piga or widow, in later records they can be piga or hemmadotter, and the various other terms for farmers daughter become more frequent. Certainly from 1900, girls might well be eg seamstress, and increasingly when including larger villages and towns, servant, home help, factory worker etc are included. My guess on this basis, if they were town dwellers was that she did domestic work of some kind.
If you want an idea of what a piga did on a farm, read the first of Vilhelm Mobergs emigrant books, describing farm life very graphically, where a piga did much more indoor work on balance while the dräng only did the outside animal and crop work. Farm life was difficult and sons and daughters and farmhands together were kept hard at work in all seasons. I disagree completely with Ingela in that certainly in Halland, the very few girls who were called jungfru at marriage were those of higher status, daughters of eg priests or professional people. (Confirmed by examination of the over 125,000 marriage posts from 1680-1935 on the Hallands befolkning 2011 CD). By contrast the in and utflyttning längder have long lists of those named as piga and dräng, nearly all farmworkers, moving from farm to farm to work in later years.