Martha Skavronskaya(Catherine I)

Martha Skavronskaya(Catherine I)

Born: 1684 AD
Died: 1727 AD, at 43 years of age.

The commonly accepted version is that Catherine was born in Ringen (Rõngu), in present-day Estonia. At the time this area was the Swedish province of Livonia. Originally named 'Marta Skowrońska', she was the daughter of Samuel Skowroński

Samuel and her mother died of plague around 1684 or 1685, leaving five children. She was taken by an aunt who sent her to be raised by Ernst Glück. She was essentially a house servant. No effort was made to teach her to read and she remained illiterate throughout her life.

She was considered a very beautiful young girl, and there are accounts that Frau Glück became fearful that Marta would become involved with her son. At the age of seventeen, she was married off to a Swedish dragoon, Johan Cruse or Johann Rabbe. When Russian forces captured Marienburg, Marta worked briefly in the laundry of the victorious regiment, and also that she was presented in her undergarments to the Brigadier General Adolf Rudolf Bauer to be his mistress.

She then became part of the household of Prince Aleksandr Menshikov, the best friend of Peter the Great. Anecdotal sources suggest that she was purchased by him. Whether the two of them were lovers is highly disputed, for Menshikov was already engaged to Darya Arsenyeva, his future wife. It is clear that Menshikov and Marta formed a lifetime alliance, and it is possible that Menshikov who was quite jealous of Peter's attentions and knew his tastes, wanted to procure a mistress on whom he could rely. In any case, in 1703, while visiting Menshikov at his home, Peter met Marta, and shortly after, he took her as his own mistress. In 1705, she converted to Orthodoxy and changed her name to Yekaterina Alexeyevna.

1708 – Catherine and Peter married secretly. They had 9 children, two of whom survived into adulthood, Yelizaveta (born 1709) and Anna (born 1708).
1711 - Catherine continued to accompany Peter on his Pruth Campaign.
1712 - Peter credited Catherine with helping the army out so they wouldn’t be forced to surrender and proceeded to marry her again (this time officially) at Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg on February 9th .
1724 - Catherine was officially named co-ruler.
1725 - Peter died on the 28th of January without naming a successor.
1727 - Died on the 27th of May.

Catherine and Peter had nine children, all of whom died in childhood except Anna and Elizabeth:

·  Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna (1708–1728)

·  Empress Yelizaveta Petrovna (1709–1762)

·  Grand Duchess Natalia Petrovna (1713–1715)

·  Grand Duchess Margarita Petrovna (1714–1715)

·  Grand Duke Pyotr Petrovich (1715–1719)

·  Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (1717-1717)

·  Grand Duchess Natalia Petrovna (1718–1725)

·  Grand Duchess Stillborn Daughter (1720-1720)

·  Grand Duke Pyotr Petrovich (1723–1723)

Other Facts

·  Catherine was the first woman to rule Imperial Russia, opening the legal path for a century almost entirely dominated by women, including her daughter Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, all of whom continued Peter the Great's policies in modernizing Russia. She was said to have been a just and fair ruler.

·  Catherine gave her name to Catherinehof near St. Petersburg, and built the first bridges in the new capital. She was also the first royal owner of the Tsarskoye Selo estate, where the Catherine Palace still bears her name.

·  She died just two years after Peter, at age 43, in St. Petersburg, where she was buried at St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress. It is not known what caused her early demise.