Grandsons of Grandfather Fyodor Nechaev: Pedigrees of Intelligence in the Field of Genealogy of F. M. Dostoevsky (from the Additions to “The Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevskys”)

The article presents the results of archival research devoted to the study of the Moscow branch of the family tree of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. The object of consideration was the generation of the grandchildren of the grandfather of the writer Fyodor Timofeevich Nechaev: the Dostoevskys (the children of Maria, his daughter from his first marriage), the Shers and the Stavrovskys (the children of the daughters of F. T. Nechaev from his second marriage — Olga and Ekaterina). Biographical data about the relatives and cousins of F. M. Dostoevsky were extracted from parish and consistory metric books stored in the Central State Archive of the City of Moscow. With a few exceptions (Mikhail, Andrey), metric records of the birth of the writer's siblings are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time; in some cases, archival documents allowed correcting inaccuracies that were present in the biographical literature about Dostoevsky. Of the thirteen Sher brothers and sisters, male and female cousins of the writer, the names of seven were not previously mentioned even in the fundamental “Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevskys” (2012). Of the seven Stavrovsky brothers and sisters, two were also named for the first time. Metric birth records are provided for all twenty of these relatives of Dostoevsky; for those who died in infancy, there are also death records. In four cases, the article published metric records of the wedding of the writer’s male and female cousins. In conclusion, the importance of biographical information about the Shers and the Stavrovskys is emphasized for the study of such an important event in the life of F. M. Dostoevsky in the 1870s, as was the litigation over the inheritance of A. F. Kumanina, the writer's mother's sister and half-sister of Olga Sher and Ekaterina Stavrovskaya (the so-called “the Kumanin heritage case”).