Gorelin Family

(also Garelin). Owners of textile mills; later merchants and manufacturers. They came from among the enserfed peasants of the village of Ivanovo (now a city).

The founder of the “dynasty” was Ivan Matveevich Gore-lin (died in the early 19th century), who accumulated his capital as a middleman in the linen trade. In the 1760’s he bought a linen mill from the Grachevs. In the I770’s and 1780’s there were more than 200 pieces of spinning and weaving equipment in operation there, and workers were hired from among peasants who paid quitrent. By 1817 there were 1.021 pieces of spinning and weaving equipment, as well as 85 printing tables, and the net annual profit of the enterprise was approximately 46,000 rubles. In the early 19th century the Gorelins owned land and serfs they had purchased in the name of the noble Sheremetev landowning family. In 1828 the Gorelins, who themselves were serfs, purchased their freedom by paying 25,000 rubles and leaving to the Shere-metevs all their immovable property (the mill, houses and buildings, and more than 700 desiatiny [763 hectares] of land) and the 69 peasants they had purchased. In 1837 they bought their enterprise back from the Sheremetevs and installed machinery.

Iakov Petrovich Gorelin (1820–90), a Kommertsii Sovetnik (honorary merchant’s title) and industrialist, was well known as an expert in local lore and was a member of the Russian Geographical Society and the Society of History and Russian Antiquities; he published a large number of works on the history and ethnography of the Suzdal’ region and on the history of the industry of Ivanovo.