About The History of Lyakhovichi

These pages contain the many years of research of three dedicated people, Deborah Glassman, Gary Palgon and Neville Lamden. They collected, organized and translated centuries of Lyakhovichi history extending from the 1400s to the 1790s. For the descendents of Lyakhovichi, it allows up to imagine how life was for our ancestors.

The history deconstructs the complexity of the Title Chain of Lyakhovichi and close settlements. You will find out how kings, princes and nobility desired to own Lyakhovichi and when, how and why those titles were acquired.

It describes Key Events that would have impacted Jewish life during these various periods. How communities were tied together by shared yeshivot, rabbis and tzaddikim (Hasidic leaders).

Dukes and Czars enumerates the long list of nobility who created laws about how the Jewish people in their Jurisdictions, specifically Lyakhovichi, lived their lives. Presented here are the special issues of National Jurisdictions and the article on that subject. It also functions as a key page for various Special Record Jurisdictions, including those of Church, Newspaper, and Archived Collections.

Jurisdictions focuses on genealogical research. Successful research is conducted jurisdictionally. Where were civil cases tried? Where were court decisions filed? Where would a professional certificate for teaching be on record? If you know which District Court held records you need, then you may be able to track them into a particular archival found today.

There are many Historical Sites in Lyakhovichi and it is hard to pick a single monument with which to begin a survey of the area. Jews have been a part of this community for five hundred years and lived among and had relationships with the Christian, Muslim and Tartar population they lived among. There are synagogues, churches, mosques, forts and castles. These monuments and their importance to the people who lived and governed are covered on this page.

The importance of Lyakhovichi in Pre-19th Century history becomes clear on this page. Lyakhovichi was Belarussian in the twentieth century, Russian in the nineteenth century and part of the Polish Kingdom in the eighteenth. It was more than two hundred years before our Lechovich ancestors were born, that it was last claimed by the Lithuanians. This history is covered here.

Transportation in closed passenger wagons drawn by multiple horses is an innovation of the late eighteenth century. It had a heyday of around eighty years. Its start was the development of good postal roads and of governments willing to pay for conveyance of the post. Its end was foreshadowed by the development of the railway. But even after the railroads entered our part of the then Russian Empire in the 1870s, the stagecoaches endured. Conveyances that could go where the railroad lines did not, were of great value for several more decades.