Legends of our community

Myrhorodshchyna is one of the ancient settlements of the Left Bank of Ukraine. It was a convenient place for conducting peace negotiations between neighboring peoples and tribes. Hence, perhaps, the ancient name – Myrhorod.

The roots of the Myrhorod region grow deep in the times of the Cossacks. From time immemorial, Myrhorod was a regimental town, and the surrounding villages were settlements of Cossacks and Hetman descendants. Myrhorod Cossacks took an active part in the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people against foreign enslavers.

Myrhorodshchyna has always been in a frenzy of events – people from Cossack families became known far beyond the borders of Ukraine thanks to their talents, and the city was often visited by prominent personalities such as Vasyl Kapnist and Taras Shevchenko.

For example, the village of Kybintsi was known not only in Ukraine, but also outside Ukraine as “Ukrainian Athens” – on its territory was the estate of the Cossack aristocrat D.P. Troshchynsky. Inside there was a lot of porcelain, bronze, a collection of gold coins and medals, weapons, personal belongings of the French queen Marie Antoinette, a picture gallery and a library. The house was surrounded by a large orchard.

8 versts from Kybyntsy was the Park-Trudolyub hamlet (now Trudolyub village), which was known as “Poltava Eden”. In the village there was a luxurious garden with rare fruit crops of amazing beauty, a park with sculptures and fountains, an artificial lake with a mechanical bridge and various curiosities. At the entrance to the manor there was an unusual arch, a hotel for visitors, secret underground passages, a nursery with rare medicinal plants.

In the village of Khomutets, a descendant of Hetman Danylo Apostol – Ivan Muravyov-Apostol, a famous writer, translator, senator and diplomat, built a manor house. This noble nest was famous for its library with classic works of national and world literature, including rare editions. The owner’s picture gallery included many works of Western European fine and decorative art, a portrait gallery of its kind, a collection of ancient and medieval antiquities from Olbia and the Crimea.

In 1912, an artesian well was drilled in the city of Myrhorod, from which a powerful spring began to flow, up to 33 thousand buckets per day. Using the water, the residents of the city noticed that after taking several baths, the pain in their joints began to disappear, and their general well-being improved. And these rumors quickly spread throughout the district.

An outstanding doctor and public figure of the Myrhorod Region, an active state adviser and infantry general, Ivan Zubkovskyi repeatedly sent water to the laboratories for research. Initially, the medical council recognized the mineral water of the Myrhorod well as medicinal and allowed its use for external use (in the form of baths), and after a few months – in 1916 – permission was obtained to use the water from the Myrhorod well as an internal therapeutic agent and to bottle it for export to other places

THE OLDEST PEARL

The time of the foundation of Myrhorod is lost in the depths of centuries. Ivan Zubkovsky, a doctor from Myrhorod, an expert on local antiquities, claimed: “On one historical map, which refers to the years 1411-1514, I happened to see it (Myrhorod – L.R.) as it existed already at that time and was marked with the name “Myrhorodok” .

It was in this convenient place, protected on both sides by the Khorol arch, that the first settlers built the oldest Myrhorod church, without which baptized people could not imagine their lives at that time. When the church was destroyed, a new one was built in its place or next to it. It happened several times. Several dates are known for the construction of new churches in Myrhorod, which bore the name Uspinska: 1648, 1802. The last cathedral church stood until the 80s of the 19th century, when the construction of the new brick church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was completed in 1887, began.

The Assumption Cathedral Church was located on the territory of the Myrhorod fortress. Already in the very name of the city of Myrhorod, there is confirmation that it had a fortress from the earliest times of its existence, that is, a “citadel” – a defensive structure, fenced, protected from enemies. And the second part of the name Myrhorod indicated that the community (“peace”) was a determining factor in the life of the ancient city (let’s recall the sayings “a lot of peace has gathered”, “from peace by a thread – a bare shirt”, etc.).

There is evidence that in 1659 in Myrhorod “they strengthened the siege in the small garden”, that is, in the fortress. The Myrhorod fortress occupied an area that can be conventionally delineated from four sides by the following modern landmarks: from the west – Gogol Street (where the district state administration building is now, Heroiv Alley), from the north and east – the bend of the Khorola River, from the southeast – the beginning of Sorochynska Street ( where the local history museum is now). The fortress had the following dimensions: 210 fathoms long, 90 fathoms wide. In the middle of the fortress there was a smaller citadel with four bastions – battle towers (didn’t the Myrhorod surname Bashtovy come down to us from then?).

The fortress was surrounded by a rampart, a palisade and a moat. According to data from 1778, it had four gates. The so-called City Gate opened to the west, to the “city”, behind it immediately began the marketplace, a place of trade, where there were rows of benches; this place was preserved as a trading place even in the 70s of the 20th century. Today it is a square opposite the building of the district state administration, the eastern part of the modern market. The benches were also on the site of the current department store and post office.

The second gate – Dzvinychny (“Outer”) opened to the northwest – from the cathedral bell tower to the river, to the bridge. A gate called Small led to the northeast; this is approximately where the bridge over Khorol, leading to the Palace of Culture of the resort, is now. And the fourth, Sorochynsky gate, went to the south, from where the Sorochynsky path began, which is now the street of the same name.

The remains of the fortress defense rampart have survived to our time: it is an elevation above the left bank of the Khorol River from the Dormition Cathedral to the beginning of Sorochynska Street.

To the south and west of the fortress began a retrenchment – a fortification placed behind the main defensive position. This is the area of ​​modern Yakov Usyk, Voskresinska, Kashinsko, Starosvitska, and Zalivna streets. The size of the retrenchment was 335 fathoms in length and 160 fathoms in width. Nitrate plants have been located here since the 30s of the 17th century in Myrhorod. According to the description of 1778, the retrenchment in Myrhorod “was dug up by saltpeter loggers so that little remained on the embankment side of the retrenchment.” At the beginning of the 20th century, the remains of the rampart and these saltpeter sides were still preserved in the estates of Kostomarov and Voskobiynyk from Myrhorod (now Voskresinska Street). There were many mills near the Kharkiv Dam. The Church of the Resurrection of Christ was located within the boundaries of the retrenchment; now it is the southwestern part of the territory of the market, the intersection of Kashinsky and Voskresinskaya streets.

There were two roads from the retrenchment: Khorolskyi and Bagachanskyi, and the road to Lubny ran across the river. The Khorol River was surrounded by meadows and marshes and still arable fields of Myrhorod residents. Two centuries ago, the city stretched along Khorol for three versts and two hundred fathoms to the east, and to the south – for three versts and two hundred and forty fathoms. The plan of the city did not have clear outlines: as one of the documents shows, “its shape is irregular.”

In the 18th century, several largest regions stood out in Myrhorod: on the left bank – Portyanka, Lisok, on the right – Vedmedivka, Prylypka, Kharkivka, Lychanka. The last four were, in fact, hamlets in ancient times. Three of these names are related to small linden groves that once surrounded Myrhorod. Since then, we have been left with the etymologically transparent names Lisok (the wood itself has long since disappeared), Prylypka (the name may have come from “a village with lypka trees”). As for the name Lychanka, there are two possible explanations of its origin. The first is that people lived here who plucked faces from linden trees. The second – which, in our opinion, is more likely – was the farm of the owner with the surname Lychenko, that is, Lychenko’s farm. “Khutor Lychenko” of Myrhorod Volost was recorded in the Russian-language edition – “Materials

household census of Poltava province” for 1900. And later Lychenko’s village became Lychenko. Although, if we go into the etymology of the name, the surname Lychenko itself is derived from the surname Lyko or Lychko – all from that linden face.

The toponym Kharkivka also comes from the proper name Kharko (Khariton). In ancient times, the name of Portianka sounded like Portyanniki – because artisans-portyanki lived there, who made portyan (in the language of our ancestors, it meant cloth, clothes made of cloth). Vedmedivka (or Medvedivka), a former farm named after its owner. It is known that at the beginning of the 18th century Trokhym Medvyd owned the village of Shakhvorostivka and a farm near Myrhorod. In a document of the 1870s, Medvedivka is called a village.

A fairly large area in the city center (now Nezalezhnosti, Kashinskogo, Starosvitska, I.Bilyka, the territory from the Ukraina store to Ostrov) was still called by the old name of Pozhezha in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century by the older residents of Myrhorod; in the 18th century it was a “forstadt”, that is, a suburb. The very name Pozhezh needs no comment. However, we are not inclined to associate it with a specific event – with the burning of a part of Myrhorod by the Tatars under Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky (this version has been established in local history publications). There is no documentary basis for this statement; in addition, the fire during Vyhovsky’s time was not the only one, over the centuries these natural disasters more than once covered entire corners of Myrhorod, which had entirely wooden buildings. The toponym Pozhezhane is recorded neither in the “Plan of the regimental town of Myrhorod with the surrounding situation” of 1778, nor in the “Descriptions of the Kyiv Governorate of the 70s and 80s of the 18th century”. And it is marked on the city plan of the second half of the 19th century. So, we can make an assumption that the name Pozhezha is related to a great natural disaster, as a result of which an entire district of the city burned down, somewhere between the end of the 18th and the middle of the 19th century.

An idea of ​​Myrhorod at the beginning of the 19th century is given by the list of projected buildings, noted in the explanation to the city plan of 1802: this is a building for the gardener, court and treasury, a public school, a post office, a hospital, a post horse yard, blacksmiths, tar factories, a “convention yard”, that is, the police station, the new town hall. At the end of the 18th century, the Old Town Hall – the building of the city’s self-government – was located in the center of the city, right in the middle between Uspinska and Voskresinska churches, it is approximately on the site of the modern district state administration.

In the 80s of the 18th century, the city’s half-ruined wooden defensive fortification, which even at that time was called ancient, was still preserved, although it was very dilapidated. The defensive rampart, which by then had already collapsed and was overgrown with grass, passed not far from the “shoulder” of the military comrade Semyon Yachny. The city authorities did not restore the fortification, because by that time the need for it had already disappeared: the borders of the Russian state advanced far to the south, to Novorossia, and the threat from the Tatars disappeared; their last attack on Poltava Oblast took place in 1768, when they only reached Kobelyak.

In the 18th century, all the houses in Myrhorod – both administrative and proprietary – were made of wood, and the poor houses were dominated by adobe “paints”. There was not a single stone building in the entire city, even the churches were made of wood. In 1786, there were 656 “civilian” houses, and, according to the official description, a little more than three thousand people lived in them. The main category of the population were the Cossacks, there were 1,368 of them. Only 107 state peasants lived in the city, but 1,095 were “proprietary subjects”, i.e. serfs. There were also 364 so-called sub-neighbours, who did not have their own farms and lived “in neighbors”; 134 parishioners, 20 churchmen and 23 townspeople. 14 merchants who owned 52 benches lived in the city. This was then a fairly respected category of the population. In addition to merchants, official documents also mention “merchants” – local residents who engaged in petty trade, receiving goods from visiting merchants.

Myrhorod of that time was spread out freely and widely. Residents’ yards were interspersed with “shoulders”, that is, undeveloped areas, gardens and gardens. Cherries, apple trees and plums gave birth abundantly; Georgians settled in Myrhorod cultivated vineyards. There were several small distilleries, water mills on Khorol, windmills on the fields outside the city. Auctions were held every Monday and Friday in Myrhorod.

Fairs became special holidays in the quiet life of Myrhorod. From time immemorial, the fair square was where the stadium is today. In 1665, two fairs were held in Myrhorod: on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin and on Mykola’s autumn day. In the 18th century, fairs were held four times a year: the first, spring fair – “in Midsummer week”, the second – on the feast of the Ascension, the third – on September 8, on the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, and the fourth – on December 6, “on Mykolaiv day”. Fairs lasted, sometimes, for several weeks. Distant merchants brought salt from Tavria, fish and caviar (caviar) from the Don, “hot wine” in barrels from Ekaterinoslav region, honey from Chernihiv region, “red goods” from Kharkiv region, tar from Right Bank Ukraine.

Myrhorod residents took iron and leather to fairs and auctions

nor cloth products. Horses, cattle, sheep, and poultry were brought from the surrounding villages for sale. Beer and honey were brewed for sale. They traded hemp, linen, handicrafts. Shoemakers, tailors, and weavers praised their wares on the fair square. The old men begged. Young people and women crowded near the blind kobzars, playing music. The fairground is bustling!

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The Myrhorod regiment was headed by a colonel. The regimental foreman consisted of a train officer, a judge, a scribe, an osavul, and a bugler. The highest judicial power belonged to the colonel. In 1763, the regimental courts were reorganized into Grodka courts, and Zemstvo and Podkomorsky courts were also created. The Grodsky court considered all criminal cases, the Podkomorsky court tried land claims among representatives of the privileged classes, and the prerogative of the Zemstvo court was to consider cases involving the escape of servants, distribution of property, payment of debts, etc. In the middle of the 18th century, the staff of the Myrhorod regiment had ten clerks “for the correction of affairs”, that is, for conducting clerical affairs.

The population of the city itself was part of the first Myrhorod hundred. The second person after the centurion, according to the hierarchy of that time, was the coachman, who was in charge of public affairs, and the centurion chieftain, who was in charge during military campaigns. The city ataman headed the police. Myrhorod Cossacks not only took part in military campaigns and campaigns, but were also involved in forced labor for the construction and repair of fortresses and fortified lines in the south of Ukraine, for digging ditches and canals far beyond the regiment’s borders.

The Myrhorod regiment had connections, including commercial ones, with many foreign cities. So, for example, in 1725, the cornet of the Yareskiv Hundred of the Myrhorod Regiment, Hryhoriy Ivashchenko, was sent to the city of Shlionsk to buy rams.

In the 50s and 60s of the 18th century, when fortification became particularly widespread, a movement known as the “search for Cossacks” spread among the “subjects”. By all means, through the court, people tried to prove their Cossack origin in order to avoid enslavement. Many Myrhorod documents testify to this. Another widespread form of protest was flight to the southern free lands, to Zaporizhzhia Sich. Thus, in May 1744, the Myrhorod regimental office received an order to publicly punish the Cossacks D. Taranenko and F. Gaponenko, who tried to escape to Zaporozhye. In the 1970s and 1980s, peasant insurgent units led by leader Semyon Harkusha operated in Poltava Oblast. Evidence has been preserved that residents of Myrhorod region helped to hide him.

In 1783, when Myrhorod became part of the Kyiv Governorate, a city magistrate, a county treasury, a noble guardianship, district courts, lower zemstkie courts, and Korolenka, Kirpotenka, Kyzenka, Bakala, Korsunski, Leshchenka, Malyarenka, Pyshchymukha, Yachni, and orphan courts were established. The positions of land surveyor and bailiff were introduced.

With the formation of the county, the former Cossack regimental sergeant began to be called nobility, and so that mocking and sarcastic Cossack surnames did not sound too “rude”, they were “ennobled” in the Russian-nobility style. Thus Brovky became Brovkovy, Harkushenky – Harkushenkovy, Havrysh – Havryshev, etc. Among the small Myrhorod nobles, among the common Cossacks and townspeople, there are Vinnychenkas, Lymaris, Panashchatenkas, Gurzhias, Sushkas, Zaichenkas, Mishchenkas, Batienkas… You can count several hundred Myrhorod Cossack surnames, those that are found in the city even today.

The real poetry of hoary antiquity comes from documents – witnesses of the past. Here is a book of “merchant records” of Myrhorod residents. We read monotonous signatures, resolutions: “The decision will be made and the board will ask for a resolution”… And suddenly – like a flash! – something familiar, as if from an old rumor: three Yavor brothers, Myrhorod Cossacks Semen, Yakiv and Omelyan, sold their cherry orchard to their neighbor. In other documents, they are already mentioned as Yavorivski, Yavorovenka: at that time surnames were treated quite freely.

In 1785, the tsarist government issued the “Deed of Rights and Benefits to the Cities of the Russian Empire”, according to which a city magistrate appeared in Myrhorod. It consisted of two burgomasters and four ratmans, who were elected every three years. The city Duma, headed by the city mayor, also appeared. Stepan Sheremetsev, a merchant from Kremenchug who settled in Myrhorod, was chosen by him.

According to the state, the county town had to have a medical staff: a doctor, a doctor, two assistant doctors and two medical students. It should be said that all doctors were only on “salary”, without the right to collect fees from their patients themselves: for the needs of medicine, a tax was collected from each yard – one kopeck. Education was at a low level: in the 70s of the 18th century, there was only one church school in Myrhorod. In the archives we find data about women who were tried for witchcraft.

the main center of education in Ukraine at that time.

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Time destroys tenements, erases inscriptions, destroys books. Names, dates, events are erased from human memory. But our past – forgotten and restored – is always with us. It is in this land, in this city, which our ancestors proudly, warmly and lovingly called “the city of Myr”.

From Lyudmila Rozsokha’s book “Myrhorod Antiquity”