Not too much is known about the Hannibals, A. Pushkin's ancestors. But everything that the stories and documents testify to has a smack of scandal.
Great-grandfather
Fortune favored the Black Moor during the life of Peter the Great. But after the death of his godfather, and then Empress Catherine I, he was immediately exiled by A. Menshikov, first to Kazan under the pretext of building a fortress, then to Tobolsk, and then to the Chinese border. And then a real exile began, from which he was rescued by Minich, who remembered the efficient engineer and achieved his transfer in 1731 to Estonia. But everything, cheerful and easy before the character has changed. Abram Petrovich became gloomy, gloomy and suspicious.
He got married and when he had a white child, he hated his wife fiercely and did everything to get rid of her. For some, quite a long time, he lived unmarried with Christina von Sjoberg and sought a divorce. During this time, they had children: four sons and three daughters. All, as one, are black. Among them was Pushkin's grandfather, Osip Abramovich Gannibal. A man with a rather curious fate, as he followed in the footsteps of the priest.
Greater Uncles
Senior IvanAbramovich became a hero-general, and A. Pushkin was proud of him.
Hannibal Osip Abramovich, his grandfather, did not inspire pride in him, just like his cousin Pyotr Abramovich, a heavy and gloomy man who loved to drink. He drove his wife away, and it was said that there was almost a harem on his estate. But he had notes from his father, on the basis of which A. Pushkin began to write a novel about his great-grandfather.
Artilleryman Hannibal
Gannibal Osip Abramovich was born in 1744 in Revel. When he grew up, he led an easy and careless life and lost the material support of a we althy father. He had accumulated a lot of debts, as he lacked the official salary of a captain of the second rank.
Marriage
He chose as his wife not too young, frankly speaking, at that time a 28-year-old girl who had been sitting too long waiting for the groom. She was the daughter of a governor from Tambov. A we althy father gave a good dowry for his daughter Maria Alekseevna Pushkina. And, having got married, Hannibal Osip Abramovich hastened to pay off his debts with his wife's money. Two years later, a daughter, Nadenka, was born, white and blue-eyed. Hannibal Osip Abramovich did not want to live with his wife after that, although he cheated on her regularly. And he left his wife and daughter forever secretly, without saying goodbye, leaving them without a livelihood.
How Maria Alekseevna lived
When her husband left her, she devoted herself to raising her daughter. And later, having married her to her distant relative Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, she put all her strength into organizing the home life of a young family. ButHannibal Osip Abramovich did not allow himself to be forgotten. Although more on that later. In the Pushkin family, life was carefree, not because they had a lot of money, no, but because both loved secular pleasures more than their children and family nest. Little Alexander received all the care and affection not from his parents, but from his grandmother and the nanny that Maria Alekseevna found for him.
At home, his parents spoke only French, and his grandmother and Arina Rodionovna taught little Sasha Russian. So we owe these two middle-aged women the fact that a brilliant reformer of the Russian language has appeared in Russia. He listened to the correct Russian speech of these two women, their stories about the affairs of dark antiquity, about the rules that reigned in ancient noble families. Under his grandmother, he began to read Russian early, and Sashenka was so fond of French novels. He has been reading Plutarch, the Odyssey, the Iliad since the age of 9.
What did grandfather do at that time
And Osip Abramovich Gannibal decided not to live as a bean, but to get married. And nothing that the wife is alive. He declared that she had died, presented false documents and married Ustinya Ermolaevna Tolstaya. The forgery was revealed, and both wives rightly attacked him. Litigation began. The first legal wife accused him of bigamy. The second filed a claim against him for embezzlement of her money in the amount of 27,000 rubles. The sentence that was given to him and which had to be carried out was heavy: seven years in a monastery for repentance. Hannibal filed a petition to the highest name, in which he explained that he had been misled. Brother Ivan Abramovich worked hard for him, and the sentence was commuted. Osip Abramovich was sent to naval service in the Black Sea. He served seven years and retired.
Mikhailovskoe
After his resignation, Hannibal settled in the Mikhailovskoye estate, which he received from his father.
He built the manor house and improved his estate in every possible way. Here he laid the most beautiful park, in which there were curtains, alleys, flower beds. He died in 1806 and was buried in Mikhailovsky. The life of such a person as Hannibal Osip Abramovich passed so thoughtlessly and in vain. His biography repeats to some extent the biography of his father, only his father was a more serious and responsible person and rose to high ranks.
Then the estate was inherited by his legal widow Maria Alekseevna.
She died in 1818 and, mockingly, is buried next to her dissolute husband. And Mikhailovskoye went to her daughter Nadezhda Osipovna. And then it became a place of poetic inspiration for Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
