Not much is known about Hannibals, the ancestors of A. Pushkin. But everything that the stories and documents testify to has a smack of scandalousness.
Great-grandfather
During the life of Peter the Great, fortune favored the black-skinned arap. But after the death of his godfather, and then Empress Catherine I, he was immediately exiled by A. Menshikov, first to Kazan under the pretext of building a fortress, then to Tobolsk, and then to the Chinese border. And then the real link began, from which he was rescued by Minich, who remembered the efficient engineer and achieved his transfer to Estonia in 1731. But everything, cheerful and easy before character has changed. Abram Petrovich became gloomy, gloomy and suspicious.
He married and when he had a white child, he hated his wife fiercely and did everything to get rid of her. For some, quite a long time, he lived unmarried with Christina von Sheberg and sought a divorce. During this time, they had children: four sons and three daughters. All, as one, are black. Among them was Pushkin's grandfather, Osip Abramovich Hannibal. A man with a rather curious fate, since he followed in the footsteps of the father.
Cousins
The elder Ivan Abramovich became a hero-general, and A. Pushkin was proud of him.
His grandfather, Hannibal Osip Abramovich, did not cause him pride, like his cousin Peter Abramovich, a heavy and gloomy man who loved to drink. He drove out his wife, and it was said that his estate was almost a harem. But he had notes from his father, on the basis of which A. Pushkin began to write a novel about his great-grandfather.
Gunner Hannibal
Hannibal Osip Abramovich was born in 1744 in Revel. When he grew up, his life was easy and disorderly and lost the material support of a wealthy father. He had a lot of debts, as he lacked the salary of the captain of the second rank.
Marriage
He chose a 28-year-old girl who was not too young, frankly, at the time, who had been sitting too long in expectation of the groom. She was the daughter of a governor from Tambov. A wealthy father gave his daughter Maria Alekseevna Pushkina a good dowry. And getting married, Hannibal Osip Abramovich hastened his wife's money to pay off his debts. Two years later, a daughter, Nadia, was born, white and blue-eyed. Hannibal Osip Abramovich did not want to live with his wife after that, although he himself cheated on her regularly. And he left his wife and daughter forever secretly, without saying goodbye, leaving them without a livelihood.
How did Maria Alekseevna live?
When her husband left, she gave herself up to raising her daughter. And later, having married her to her distant relative, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, she put all her strength into organizing the home life of a young family. But Hannibal Osip Abramovich did not allow to forget about himself. Although more on that later. Life in the Pushkin family was carefree, not because they had a lot of money, no, but because both loved secular pleasures more than their children and their family nest. Little Alexander received all the care and affection not from his parents, but from his grandmother and nanny, which Maria Alekseevna found for him.
At home, parents spoke only French, while grandmother and Arina Rodionovna taught little Sasha the Russian language. So we owe these two elderly women the fact that a brilliant reformer of the Russian language has appeared in Russia. He listened to the correct Russian speech of these two women, their stories about the affairs of dark antiquity, about the rules prevailing in the old noble families. With his grandmother, he early began to read in Russian, Sasha’s French novels, and so was fond of. From 9 years old he read Plutarch, Odyssey, Iliad.
What did grandfather do at this time
And Osip Abramovich Hannibal decided not to live a rampart, but to marry. And nothing that the wife is alive. He stated that she died, presented false documents and married on Ustinya Ermolaevna Tolstoy. The forgery was revealed, and both wives rightly attacked him. Litigation began. The first lawful wife accused him of bigamy. The second brought him a claim of embezzlement of her money in the amount of 27,000 rubles. The sentence that was imposed on him and which was to be executed was difficult: seven years in a monastery for repentance. Hannibal filed a petition in the highest name, in which he explained that he was misled. Brother Ivan Abramovich was very busy for him, and the sentence was commuted. Osip Abramovich was sent to naval service in the Black Sea. He served seven years and retired.
Mikhailovsky
After the resignation, Hannibal settled in the Mikhailovskoye estate, which he received from his father.
He built the manor house and in every possible way landscaped his estate. Here he laid the most beautiful park, in which there were curtains, alleys, flower beds. He died in 1806 and was buried in Mikhailovsky. So thoughtlessly and in vain was the life of such a person as Hannibal Osip Abramovich. His biography repeats to some extent the biography of his father, only his father was a more serious and responsible person and rose to high ranks.
Then the estate was inherited by his lawful widow, Maria Alekseevna.
She died in 1818 and, as a mockery, is buried next to her dissolute husband. And Mikhailovsky went to her daughter Nadezhda Osipovna. And then it became a place of poetic inspiration for Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin.