Collection of Maps and Drawings

Collection

Holding institution (official language):: Державний архів Херсонської області

Scope and content:: Documents housed in the “Kherson County” section include charts of plots of Jewish colonies: Bobrovyi Kut (1812, 1820, 1826, 1848, 1863); Romanovka (1855, 1863, 1899); Bol’shaia and Malaia Seidemenukha (1812, 1820, 1826, 1848, 1863, 1900), Bol’shoi and Malyi Nagartav (1820-22, 1830, 1847, 1855, 1863, 1908); Efingar’ (1820, 1910); Izluchistaia (1855); Ingul’skaia (1813, 1821); Kamenka (1855); L’vovo (1841, 1855, 1864); Novoberislav (1863-64); Novovitebsk (1855); Novokovno (1855); Novopodol’sk (1855); and charts of the disputed plot between the uncultivated landowner’s plot of Tatarka and the uncultivated plots of Bobrovaia and Krutaia on which the colonies of Bobrovyi Kut and Bol’shaia and Malaia Seidemenukha were situated (1889, 1892, 1900). Under the headings of general surveying charts (1810-20s) are materials containing information on previous surveys, population size (with a breakdown by gender), and the amount and quality of land held by colonies. Some of the later charts include explications indicating amount and quality of land.

Administrative/biographical history:: This was established in 1998 from fragmentary cartographic documents, primarily from the pre-Soviet period, that had previously been housed in the archives of the Novorossiia and Voznesensk Surveying Expeditions, the Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, and Tavriia Provincial Drawing Offices, the Kherson Revenue Chamber, the Kherson State Properties Chamber, Kherson Circuit Court, etc. Persons who compiled these charts include county land surveyors of the Kherson province and land surveyors of the Ekaterinoslav and Saratov Surveying Offices and the Jewish department of the Kherson-Bessarabia Provincial State Properties Administration. The collection’s documents reflect processes by which land was allocated for ownership and rental, general surveying and special demarcation in the late 18th-19th centuries, and various land settlement campaigns of the Russian Empire and the USSR in the early 20th century; territorially, the documents pertain to central (in part) and southern modern Ukraine, including Crimea, as well as Transnistria/Pridnestrov’e (Republic of Moldova).

Access points: locations:: Bobrovyi Kut; Bol’shaia and Malaia Seidemenukha; L’vovo; Novoberislav; Novokovno; Novovitebsk; Tatarka; Ukraine

System of arrangement:: The fonds includes a single inventory consisting of two parts (before and after 1917) and eleven sections corresponding to administrative-territorial units of various levels; the inventory is systematised according to the territorial-chronological principle.