Description of the Old Catholic Cemetery in Stavyshche

The Catholic Cemetery in the Stavyshche Town in the Kyiv region is over 200 years old. It is believed to have been established in the mid-18th century, when Jerzy Augustin Mniszek was the monitor of Bila Tserkva.

From 1774, the Bila Tserkva starostvo was owned by the Polish magnate family of Branicki of the Korczak. Thanks to the efforts of Franciszek-Ksawery Branicki, a stone church in honour of the Holy Trinity was built in Stavyshche in 1778 to replace the wooden one. For a century and a half, this church served the religious needs of Poles who settled and lived in Stavyshche and the surrounding villages.

Archival sources show that in 1916, the rector of the Roman Catholic parish, Mikołaj Trocki, requested a plot of land for a new cemetery, as the old one was almost full. The priest cited the fact that with the outbreak of World War I, about 2,000 refugees from the Kingdom of Poland arrived in Stavyshche, increasing the mortality rate.

However, most Poles left Stavyshche very soon. According to oral testimony, this happened in May 1920. In 1931, the Bolshevik authorities closed the church, and in 1934, they destroyed it. The parish clergy were repressed. As a result, the cemetery was no longer properly maintained.

Read more about its history in the description «Stavyshche Catholic Cemetery», which is freely available on Google Books. The book also contains 66 photographs of gravestones, the names on which were legible and for which corresponding death records were found in the metric books of the Stavyshche Church.

The oldest identified burial dates back to 1855. The metric record states: «On 4 July 1855, in the town of Stavyshche, nobleman Tytus Chodynski died of fever, having received the Holy Sacrament. He was 65 years old at the time of his death and is survived by his widow, Anna, née Blaganowska. He was a parishioner of the Stavyshche Church. The body was buried by priest Erazm Ossolinski».

The last burial date indicated on the tombstone is 4 April 1917 — on the grave of the parish priest, Dean Mikołaj Trocki of Tarashcha.

The description of the burials is compiled according to the Polish alphabet and contains the following surnames: Artiuszenkowa, Baczyński, Bechacki, Bieliński, Borowski, Chorżewski, Cichocki, Czerniachowski, Czerski, Czołchański, Godlewski, Gruszecki, Horochy, Irżykiewiczi, Jabłonski, Кamieński, Kamiński, Krajewski, Kryński, Kuniszi, Lewandoski, Lyho, Makowski, Malewski, Mikulski, Milewski, Mirski, Niedźwiedzki, Nowicki, Pęczkowski, Poulieff, Pozniaki, Rebczyński, Rowiński, Rubiński, Sielecki, Siezieniewiczi, Skuratowski, Smoleński, Smolinski, Strusewiczi, Sufczyński, Turowiczi, Udymowski, Szczawiński, Szydłowski, Szyszkowski, Wądołowski, Wyszyński, Zaremby, Żukowski, Żuławski.

At the end, there is an index of geographical names mentioned in the death records.

This and other data from the description will be useful to genealogists whose ancestors lived in the Kyiv province or in Right-Bank Ukraine in general in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.