He was of the princely Russian family which traces its origin to the ancient rulers of Starodub.
Starodub |
In the 18th - 19th centuries, the Popovtsy lived in communities on the Vetka Island on the Sozh River, in Starodub, along the Irgiz River, in monasteries of the province of Nizhny Novgorod along the Kerzhenets River, although they were scattered throughout Russia and even far beyond its boundaries.
The region received its name after the Severians, an East Slavic tribe which inhabited the territory in the late 1st millennium A.D. Their main settlements included the present-day cities of Novhorod-Siverskyi, Chernihiv (Chernigov), Putyvl (Putivl), Hlukhiv (Glukhov), Liubech, Kursk, Rylsk, Starodub, Trubchevsk, Sevsk, Bryansk, and Belgorod.