Eduard Tärküll and two riverbanks: a name the archive will not turn into a legend
A 1968 field card links a former Allika farm with blacksmith E. Tärküll and the river's eastern bank. Another card remembers Tärküll at the shepherds' house on the other side. Between them is not a finished genealogy, but an honest question.
Correction, 17 September 2026. The earlier identification of Piiritusevabriku A11 / property 12526 with present-day Allika has been withdrawn: it is a different plot in Maidla. Its plan and four building symbols cannot be treated as the plan or buildings of the present farmyard. The earlier research stage is preserved below. The new working identification is Allika A10 / 2067, based on the 1935 plans; this does not establish legal ownership.
Read the updated Allika A10 source check →
Rahvusarhiiv · ERA.T-3.22.2534 · Allika A10Two banks and one name
A 1968 card for a former Allika farm contains a wonderfully human detail: ‘craftsman, blacksmith E. Tärküll’. It is tempting to picture a workshop, horses at the road and the person people visited when iron failed.
Nearby, the archive offers another trace. At the shepherds' house on the western riverbank, a 1922 entry names Eduard Tärküll. Between the two cards lie a river, a bridge and the temptation to make a neat story too quickly.
But the records do not say these were the same yard. They do not name the present Allika, A-11 or property 12526. They do not tell us whether the blacksmith lived here, worked nearby or simply stayed in someone's memory.
We keep this trace because it is vivid and incomplete. A good story does not hide the hole in the map; it shows it and waits for the next sheet where person and place finally meet in one line.
J. Tärno's field card of 12 July 1968 calls a former Allika farm on the river's eastern bank and notes ‘craftsman, blacksmith E. Tärküll’.
Another card places the Karjaste maja on the western bank by the bridge; Karl Kirs and Eduard Tärküll are recorded there for 1922. Archive descriptions from 1930–1940 confirm files for Eduard Tärküll in Maidla.
This is a rare case where local memory keeps not only a place name but a person's craft. A blacksmith was not decorative village folklore: the work joined horses, tools, roads and households.
Yet the two cards do not say Karjaste maja and the former Allika were the same place. Nor do they name the present yard, A-11 or property 12526. Their value is a precise question, not a convenient answer.
It is not established how Eduard Tärküll was related to residents of Allika, or whether he lived on the site now associated with Allika Farm.
An independent document must join the same person and a precise place before Tärküll can be called an owner or ancestor of the farm.