What was known
- Ioan Dolishchynskyi — a priest in Lypovenky, Balta county (uyezd), from 1795
- In the 19th century, bearers of the surname were recorded as odnodvortsy — so there had to be noble roots
What was missing
- There is no family file in the nobility fond
- The family is not in the alphabetical indexes of the nobility or of the Noble Assembly's resolutions
- Where Ioan himself came from: he is not in the Lypovenky parish registers for 1766–1795
How Nyshporka searched
When the indexes are silent, read the books themselves
Only one way is left: read the files of the Podolia Noble Assembly page by page. Nyshporka read around 120 of its files — more than 50 thousand pages of old cursive script.
A rare surname — every match stands out
The surname is rare, so if the family is in what has been read, the search will not miss it. In the 1802 book of minutes, 1757 pages long, it came up on exactly one — page 1192.
Check against the manuscript
The machine read the parish name as “Orsan”. The letters were compared with other words by the same scribe — and it came out as the church of Ozerna.
Act No. 664, 17 December 1802
The brothers Jan and Gabriel Dolishchynskyi — sons of Teodor, grandsons of Mykhailo — asked the Podolia Noble Assembly to recognise their nobility. Jan is our Ioan. The evidence was an extract from the record of his baptism in 1758 and the testimony of twelve noblemen.
- How the machine read it
- w Sięgach Metrycnych Cerhwi Orsan
- How it is actually written
- Tysiąc Siedmset Pięćdziesiąt Ośmego Roku Dwudziestego Czwartego Dnia Marca, w Xięgach Metrycznych Cerkwi Ozerańskiey, Urodzonego Jana Doliszczynskiego…
- In English
- In the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty-eight, on the twenty-fourth day of March, in the parish registers of the Ozerna church [is recorded the baptism] of the noble Jan Dolishchynskyi…
The assembly's resolution
«…złożone przez Urodzonych Doliszczynskich Dowody za dostateczne uznawszy Ród ich… do Pierwszey Części Szlacheckiey Xiąszki Podolskiey Gubernij wnieść…»
The assembly found the evidence sufficient and resolved to enter the family in Part One of the genealogical book of the Podolia Governorate and to issue a patent — on payment of two roubles to the commission's treasury.
Three generations from one act
The act names the whole family — with ages as of December 1802. So the family tree at once grew two generations up and one down.
Both brothers are “clergy at the churches” in Lypovenky, Balta county. In honey colour — the names the act gave us.
What happened next
I found no confirmation of this resolution anywhere: the family is not in the genealogical books of Part One under “D”, nor in the index of resolutions for 1802, nor in later lists of the nobility. The working theory is that the patent was never paid for.
So act No. 664 is, for now, the only document found in which the Noble Assembly recognised the family as noble.
One date is not yet proof
That is why I gathered every place where Ioan gives his own age. These entries were made by different people in different years, and all of them point to 1758.
| Source | Age | So born in |
|---|---|---|
| Noble Assembly act, 1802 | 44 | ~1758 |
| clergy revision, 1811 | 52 | ~1759 |
| revision list, 1816 | 56 | ~1760 |
| confession list, 1818 | 60 | ~1758 |
| confession list, 1821 | 63 | ~1758 |
| service record, 1822 | 63 | ~1759 |
An Ozerna that is not on the map
The name “Ozerna” was not in any Podolian gazetteer. It turned up in Setsynskyi's “Parishes and Churches of the Podolia Eparchy” of 1901, on p. 812: «Первоначально Шумиловъ назывался „Озирна“» (“Shumyliv was originally called ‘Ozirna’”). The same page says the wooden church of St Luke was built in 1752 — six years before the baptism.
What is not yet proven
Shumyliv is the leading theory, not a fact. No parish register of Ozerna or Shumyliv for 1758 has been found. That is the book that would turn the theory into proof.
Ioan's own hand
And the Lypovenky parish register of 1798 holds something no retelling can give: Ioan's signature under an entry. It is the oldest known autograph of the Dolishchynskyi family.
- As written
- Іереи Іоаннъ Долищинский
What the researcher gained
- A verbatim transcription of act No. 664 — line for line, with abbreviations expanded and uncertain places marked
- A Ukrainian translation and the family tree that follows from the act
- What does not follow from the act — in a separate section
- The fate of the resolution: genealogical books, indexes and lists checked — every “not found” with how much was searched
- Where to go next: files not yet digitised
How much work it took
- ≈120
- files of the Noble Assembly read
- 50k+
- pages in them
- 1192nd
- the page with the act — one of 1757
- 12
- noble witnesses in the act