[Sca-cooks] Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 61, Issue 49

[Alexander Clark]

On Thu, 26 May 2011 12:21:31 -0700 (PDT), Donna Green
<donnaegreen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Does the Province{?} of Ostgardr consist of just the five
>> boroughs/
>> cantons?? And what is an SCA "province"? How does it
>> vary from a?
>> barony or a principality?
>
> A province is the same as a barony in terms of size and officer
> requirements, but it does not have a Baron and/or Baroness. They are common
> here in the West, particularly in the Mists. I think the Crown Provice of
> Ostgardr (NY) and the Provice of Treegirtsea (Chicago) are the only ones
> outside the West.
>
> The theory in the old days, as I understand it, is that a Baron/ess's job is
> to stand in for the Crown when They aren't there. But, if you live in an
> area where the Crown is almost always there, then you don't need a stand in,
> so you have a Province instead of a Barony. The Provinces in the
> Principality of the Mists are in the parts of the SF Bay Area where all our
> early kings came from. Golden Rivers (Sacramento) in the Principality of
> Cynagua, became a Province after having been a Barony. The specific reasons
> for this change are unknown to me.

Tree-Girt-Sea actually hasn't been a province for about a decade now.
After Grey Gargoyles had become a separate shire, and a couple of
other groups had grown up in the Chicago area, they all got together
in a new barony, which is named Ayreton (meaning Windy City).

Originally a "province" was a geographical area within the Berkeley
SCA, and IIUC the word was used to refer to the places where
activities took place, regardless of whether the planners, hosts, or
"Supreme Autocrats" of those activities were from that area. I think
it was around A.S. iv. to vj. that those provinces were organized,
with seneschals and maybe other provincial officers. Baronies were
introduced as the West (newly renamed) expanded beyond northern
California, and the new groups in Oregon, Washington, and Arizona
became the first baronies (but IIRC Atenveldt got changed to a
province because they didn't have a baron).

For a while, once new local groups no longer got to be kingdoms, there
was a rule that the first group in a state would be a barony, and
subsequent groups would be cantons of that barony (though this didn't
apply to California). That was why the Middle Marches, in Bowling
Green, OH, got to start as a barony, and the Cleftlands didn't, when
the founder of the Cleftlands omitted his return address from his
letter to the corporation and they couldn't conclude their
correspondence until after they had recognized the Middle Marches in
Bowling Green.

-- 
Henry/Alex