Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov

Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov – a merchant of the third and later the second guild, father of A. P. Chekhov. He was born in 1825 as a serf in the village of Olkhovatka in the Voronezh Governorate. He received a basic education at a village school and studied music at the church. At sixteen he was bought out by his father, after which he was registered as a townsman in Rostov-on-Don. He was engaged in cattle driving, and later in trade, which he learned in Taganrog. 

 

In 1854 he married Evgeniya Yakovlevna Morozova; the couple had five sons and a daughter. Thanks to his enterprise, Chekhov saved money and in 1857 obtained the rank of merchant of the third guild, and in 1859 the rank of merchant of the second guild. He took part in the public life of the town and in 1871 was awarded a medal.

In 1876 the railway reached Rostov-on-Don. This (and also the construction of a stone house, which turned out to be too expensive due to the contractor's fault) is associated with Chekhov's ruin. He moved to Moscow, and in November 1877, thanks to the recommendations of his nephew Mikhail, he got a job as a clerk in the trading office of Ivan Gavrilov. Later he obtained the position of bookkeeper and worked in that office for thirteen and a half years, up to April 1891. From 1892 he lived at his son Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's Melikhovo estate. There he supervised the farm, tended the garden, read newspapers and kept a diary. Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov died on 12 October 1898 after an unsuccessful surgical operation and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.