Historical Documents held at Miam Head Family, Damyang

The old documents held at Mohyeongwan in Damyang comprise 238 items of historical documents and records preserved at Mohyeongwan, which also houses the Miam ilgi (Diary of Miam, Treasure No. 260) of Yu Hui-chun (1513–1577), pen name Miam, a Joseon-period civil official and scholar of the Seonsan Yu clan. They include household registration documents such as household registers (hogudanja) and certified household registers (junhogu); petitions such as soji, sangseo, wonjeong and deungjang; bills of sale; property-division documents; slave registers; student rosters (including that of Uiam Seowon); examination answer sheets; and personal letters. Spanning a wide range from the sixteenth century, before the Japanese invasions of 1592–98, to the late nineteenth century, and relating variously to the Seonsan Yu clan, Yu Hui-chun and Uiam Seowon, the collection is valuable for the study of institutional history, everyday life and cultural history. The oldest document in the collection dates from 1566, when, after Yu Hui-chun returned from exile in Jongseong, his elder sister, who had been managing his land and slaves during his absence, formally transferred them to him. The property-division document of the Gimhae Kim clan (around 1570, measuring 350 cm by 52 cm) and that of the Ulsan Kim clan (1583) illustrate well how property was inherited before the Japanese invasions of 1592–98. The Gimhae Kim document appears to record property given by Kim Jang to his daughter, a great-granddaughter of Kim Il-son, when she married into the family as the wife of Yu Hui-chun's grandson. The Ulsan Kim document records the division of property by a woman of the Ulsan Kim clan, daughter of Kim In-hu (pen name Haseo) and daughter-in-law of Yu Hui-chun, among her two sons and one daughter. The Mohyeongwan documents relating to Yu Hui-chun himself include property-division records of what he received from his wife's family and of what he divided among his own children, as well as the examination papers of his descendants, household registration records such as household registers and certified household registers, and petitions relating to disputes over ancestral graveyard land within the lineage. There are also documents relating to Uiam Seowon, the Confucian academy where Yu Hui-chun was enshrined. Samcheonsa Shrine was built at Changpyeong in 1607 to honour him; around 1630 it was relocated to Damyang and renamed Baekcheonsa, and in 1669, following a memorial submitted by Song Jun-gil, it received a royal charter and became Uiam Seowon. The earliest of the academy-related records are the Yeonggeon yusagi (Record of the Building Officers, 1607), compiled when Samcheonsa was built, together with rosters of Confucian students, of the western study hall, and of caretakers. The later material, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, consists of petitions relating to graveyard-land disputes within the Seonsan Yu family, together with household registration records and bills of sale of the lineage's descendants, amounting in all to thirty-six types of document. Of the documents held at Mohyeongwan, eight date from the reigns of King Myeongjong and King Seonjo, the period in which Yu Hui-chun himself lived, and four from the reigns of King Gwanghaegun to King Hyeonjong, when his shrine was built. From the reign of King Sukjong onward, household registers and certified household registers of Yu Hui-chun's descendants in Damyang have been preserved, and this run of certified household registers continues through to the reign of Emperor Gojong. The documents most heavily concentrated among those that survive, dating from the reigns of King Sunjo to King Cheoljong, relate to the everyday life of Yu Hui-chun's descendants. Most of the material from this period consists of petitions relating to graveyard-land disputes within the Seonsan Yu lineage of Damyang; the remainder comprises bills of sale, personal notes and receipts that convey the everyday life of the lineage's descendants, together with the biographical accounts, epitaphs, genealogies and household registers of the lineage's ancestors. The historical documents and records held at Mohyeongwan in Damyang include as many as eight documents predating the Japanese invasions of 1592–98, and together they offer a glimpse of the changing social and economic history, institutional history and everyday life of the periods that followed.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Damyang, Jeonnam & Gwangju

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산