It just so happens that adding a grand title to a noble family name automatically piques people’s interest. Although, as we well remember, reliable information about the titled nobility of the Kharkiv Governorate does exist—you just have to spend a little time looking for it.
However, sometimes a grand title hides the story of an ordinary person. And that story can be so captivating that it would make a great screenplay for a movie or an adventure novel.
Take, for example, the Counts of Devier, who lived in the Zmiiv District. Not only were they counts, but they were also Deviers. It sounds grand, pretentious, and slightly French. The imagination conjures up an image of descendants of Charlemagne who, for reasons unknown, ended up in our beautiful Sloboda Ukraine region. However, the truth is much more interesting.
In August 1697, a demonstration naval battle was staged in Amsterdam for Peter I. The tsar, being a man of passion, could not resist; he boarded one of the frigates and rushed into the thick of the battle. Naturally, the ship’s crews did their utmost to outdo one another in agility.
However, it was the brave 15-year-old ship’s boy who won Peter’s heart the most. His name was Antonio Manuel Vieira. He came from a family of Portuguese Sephardic Jews who had arrived in Holland in 1673. In the fall of that same year, the man who would later be called “Peter the Great’s Jew” received Russian documents and became a page, and later the tsar’s valet. At court, the former Portuguese, Antonio Manuel, became Anton Manuilovich and enjoyed a meteoric rise.
In July 1711, along with Pavel Yaguzhinsky, he was promoted to the rank of adjutant general, a rank established by the tsar specifically for them. Around this time, Devier fell in love. And not just with anyone, but with the eldest sister of his sworn enemy, Count Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, who, as they say, had previously been Peter I’s mistress. When Anna Danilovna Menshikova was already pregnant, Devier officially asked for her hand in marriage. According to researchers, the “semi-sovereign ruler” flew into a rage and either beat Anton Manuilovich himself or ordered his servants to do so. In response, Devier rushed to complain to the tsar, and as a result, Peter personally ordered Menshikov to marry off his sister, which he did with great reluctance.
In 1718, Deviera was appointed Chief of Police of St. Petersburg. Thanks to this, a simple Portuguese Jew went down in history as the empire’s first chief of police. And by a personal imperial decree dated October 24, 1726, Lieutenant General Anton Manuilovich Devier, Chief of Police of St. Petersburg, was elevated to the rank of count of the All-Russian Empire.
In 1727, already during the reign of Catherine I, Anton Manuilovich was accused of intending to remove Peter II from the line of succession and of attempting to obstruct the execution of Empress Catherine I’s will; he was stripped of his nobility and titles, his official ranks, and his estates; he was flogged and exiled to Siberia. According to a number of historians, Alexander Danilovich Menshikov was the author of the denunciation.
It was not until December 1, 1741, that Empress Elizabeth Petrovna issued a personal decree releasing Devier from exile “with his guilt forgiven.” By a supreme decree dated February 14, 1743, Devier was restored his order and count’s title, as well as his estate in the Valuy District of the Belgorod Governorate. Subsequently, the descendants of Count Devier owned estates in Sloboda Ukraine and continued to engage in deeds no less scandalous than those of their ancestor.
In 1742, Empress Elizabeth granted the title of count to her cousins. The newly minted counts received vast estates, particularly in the Vovchansky and Zmiyevsky districts. The children of Simon Hendrik, a simple Lithuanian peasant, and Christina (sister of Empress Catherine I), as well as their descendants, are known in our region as the Counts Hendrikov. If you look in the State Archives of the Kharkiv Region, you can find quite a few records about them, and we have already written about them as well.
In the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century, the son of a Riga pastor, Andrei Andreevich, managed to build a very successful career in the military, and by 1839, his son had already become a count. The motto on their coat of arms read: “Diligence conquers all.” Perhaps it was precisely because of this that Count Kleinmichel, the last owner of the beautiful Lyutovskaya estate, co-authored with Grigory Lukomsky the unique book *Ancient Estates of the Kharkiv Governorate*.
However, not all foreigners were so fortunate. By no means did every ordinary foreigner manage to become a titled nobleman. As we recall, the second part of the Book of Nobility included families that met the criteria of Emperor Peter I’s decree of January 16, 1721—that is, all senior officers and their descendants.
The third category included families holding the 8th rank according to the Table of Ranks and falling under the provisions of Emperor Peter I’s decree of January 24, 1722: “All Russian or foreign officials who are, or have been, in the first eight ranks, and whose legitimate children and descendants shall, for all time, be held in equal esteem to the highest nobility in all honors and privileges, even if they are of low birth and have never before been elevated to the nobility or granted a coat of arms by a crowned sovereign.”
It was precisely this that provided military and civilian specialists (including foreign ones) with a legitimate opportunity to become part of the Russian ruling class and obtain the corresponding rights and privileges. Some of these stories are quite interesting.
Let us begin, perhaps, with Don Alonzo, a simple nobleman from the Kharkiv Governorate. Joseph Grigoryevich, known as Don Alonzo, was the son of a senior officer in the Spanish army. He entered service as a noncommissioned officer in 1829, was promoted to ensign in 1834, and then, continuing to rise through the ranks, retired with the rank of staff captain in 1839. On the basis of his own merits, he was admitted by the Kharkiv Noble Assembly on August 25, 1839, to the second section of the Noble Genealogical Register.
During the reign of Peter I, the architect Ivan Yakovlevich de Rossi (1699–1769) arrived in St. Petersburg from Milan. One of his grandsons, Ignatius Petrovich de Rossi, died from wounds sustained in the Battle of Borodino. Another, Second Lieutenant Gaspar Petrovich, entered service “as a member of the nobility of the Genoese nation of the city of Bordighera” in the Preobrazhensky Life Guard Regiment as a corporal in 1792.
In 1807, Gaspar retired with the rank of second lieutenant and became a landowner in the Zmiiv District. The de Rossi family was included in the genealogical register of hereditary nobles of the Kharkiv Governorate in 1822 and 1888.
Pavel Ivanovich Leigoni, a French subject, upon completing his medical studies at the Imperial University of Kharkiv in 1823, entered military service as a resident physician at a military hospital in 1825, and was transferred to the position of battalion surgeon in 1828. Leigoni retired from service in 1830 and was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 3rd Class, and a medal. On May 25, 1832, Leigoni renounced his French citizenship, and on September 23, 1846, Staff Surgeon Pavel Ivanov, Leigoni’s son, along with his wife Adelaide, was entered into the third section of the Book of Nobility on the basis of his own merits.
In 1834, Pavel Ivanovich Andion, an ordinary Bavarian subject, enlisted as a private in the army of the Russian Empire. In 1859, he retired with the rank of staff captain. However, after some time, he returned to military service, retiring in 1871 with the rank of staff captain. As a result, on July 9, 1871, Staff Captain Pavel Ivanov, son of Andion, along with his son Nikolai, was entered into the second part of the Book of Nobility on the strength of his own merits.
And to wrap things up, here’s another very interesting story.
In 1783, Zakhar Grigoryevich Benken (as a volunteer from among the residents of Livonia) entered service as a corporal. On May 11, 1815, Zakhar Benken, a retired second lieutenant residing in the Kup’yans’k District, was entered into the second section of the Book of Nobility on the strength of his own merits. In the mid-19th century, his son Mikhail served as
the Kup’yans’k District Judge; he owned an ancestral estate in the Kup’yans’k District near the village of Lozova, comprising 1,200 desyatinas of land with forest, as well as approximately 500 peasants.
There have been many such family stories in our region’s past. To paraphrase the words of a well-known song, we could say of them: “Those who started with nothing can achieve a great deal through hard work…”
