Skip to content
VitrineRoyal Houses of Europe
Sign in

Nataliya Viktorovna Stroganova

1800–1855

Born
10 Oct 1800, Saint Petersburg
Country of birth
Russian Empire, today Russia
Died
24 Jan 1855, Saint Petersburg
facts
6
sources
1
images and files
0

Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

  • Birth10 Oct 1800, Saint PetersburgProbable1 source
  • Death24 Jan 1855, Saint PetersburgProbable1 source
  • UnionAlexander StroganovConfirmed1 source

A life in time

  1. Born · Saint Petersburg

    Birth, Saint Petersburg

  2. Child born: Grigori Stroganov

    Birth, Saint Petersburg

  3. Died · Saint Petersburg

    Death, Saint Petersburg

What was it like?

The world around Saint Petersburg, 1800: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Nataliya was born the same year as Millard Fillmore, France Prešeren, and Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay.

Born the same year

  • Millard Fillmore

    president of the United States from 1850 to 1853

  • France Prešeren

    Slovene national poet, a Carniolan Romantic poet of Slovene descent (1800–1849)

  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

    British historian and politician (1800–1859)

  • Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

    German Field Marshal (1800–1891)

  • Friedrich Wöhler

    German chemist (1800-1882)

  • John Brown

    American abolitionist

Fashion

Basic peasant men's clothing

Peasant men typically wore shirts and trousers, while boys wore only shirts, with shirts often being secured at the waist with laces to keep them from interfering with work.

Lifelong festive peasant clothing

A peasant family would prepare a festive outfit meant to last a lifetime, which was stored carefully and worn only on the most important holidays.

Music

Church ban on folk musical instruments

Russian Orthodoxy officially rejected folk instruments, and the church once famously burned five carriages filled with them in the 17th century. Consequently, no musical instruments were permitted in Orthodox church services during this period.

Improvised percussion for fast folk dances

During fast-paced dances known as pliaska, performers often used improvised percussion instruments, including wooden spoons, metal pots, or even farm scythes to keep the rhythm.

Getting around

Essential road gear and carriages

Travelers commonly used specialized chests called pogrebetz, which featured internal partitions to hold essential items like tea-pots, glass carafes with rum, and milk jugs for long journeys. Many peasants used simple, horse-drawn carts known as telegi, which were frequently built without iron tires, making them highly susceptible to damage on rough roads.

Travel by horse-drawn relay transport

Between 1800 and 1824, ordinary people traveled between towns primarily using horse-drawn carriages, wagons, or sledges, often relying on the state-run relay system to secure fresh horses at designated postal stations. Travelers were required to carry an official permit called a podorozhnaya to document their route and status at these stations.

Daily life

Children's home education

Many merchant and commoner children were educated at home by local sextons or clerks, with the Psalter and Book of Hours serving as their primary textbooks. Formal schooling remained rare for these groups, as even many noble children relied on varied levels of home instruction.

Lighting in the home

Peasant huts were illuminated by a torch inserted into the stove's crack or by simple oil lamps with wicks. In better-off homes, candles were used when oil lamps were unavailable.

Food

Kvass as the universal drink

Kvass, a fermented drink made from rye flour and malt, served as the universal daily beverage for the lower classes.

Meat as a rare luxury

Meat was a luxury for many families, typically consumed only on major religious holidays like Christmas and Easter.

Prices and wages
Around 1775–1799

Annual earnings of textile workers

In 1796, women working in textile production could earn 50 to 90 paper rubles per year.

Around 1775–1799

Daily wages for construction workers

In 1779 and 1780, unskilled construction laborers in Moscow earned 10 to 20 kopecks per day.

Work

Common non-agricultural peasant jobs

To supplement agricultural income, peasants took jobs such as boatmen, longshoremen, construction workers, cabmen, and artisans in cities. In the central provinces, 27 percent of men did not plow land at all, relying entirely on these non-agricultural trades.

Earnings of Volga boatmen

In the 1810s, boatmen on the Volga earned about 300 rubles per season for their labor. However, the later introduction of steamboats caused these earnings to drop significantly, to between 60 and 90 rubles.

News and letters
Around 1781–1799

Home Delivery of Money Started in 1781

By 1781, the postal system had expanded its services to include the delivery of money directly to a person's door, in addition to regular parcels and private correspondence.

Cost of sending a letter

Letters were weighed in lots (one lot equaling 12.8 grams) and cost 10 kopecks per lot to send, which was expensive given that a bowl of cabbage soup with meat cost one kopeck at a tavern.

During their lifetime

  1. 1805

    State Peasant Resettlement Begins in 1805

    In 1805, the government launched a systematic state-sponsored resettlement policy, moving thousands of land-starved state peasants from crowded areas to borderland provinces with new tax exemptions.

  2. 1810

    Military Colonies Established in 1810

    Military colonies were created in 1810, aiming to combine army life with agricultural labor, which essentially turned the peasants' daily existence into a structured, barracks-like routine.

  3. 1837

    First Public Railway Opens in 1837

    In 1837, the first public passenger railway opened, running between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo, marking the beginning of the railway age in Russia.

  4. 1837

    Winter Palace Fire in 1837

    A devastating fire destroyed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in 1837, leading to a massive, rapid rebuilding effort that was completed within just 15 months.

  5. 1848

    Cholera and Crop Failures in 1848

    In 1848, a major cholera epidemic, coupled with a bad harvest and dry weather that caused widespread town fires, severely disrupted the lives of the agrarian population.

Family

Spouses

Children

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.