page_title: Ozeryshche, Ukraine
section_title: Early time
hierarchical_section_title: Ozeryshche, Ukraine / History / Early time
caption_attribution_description: English: Old oak crosses at the cemetery of Ozeryshche (Ukraine) village. Українська: Старі дубові хрести на кладовищі в селі Озерище Канівського району Черкаської області.
context_page_description: Ozeryshche or Ozerysche is a village in Central Ukraine, located in the Kaniv Raion of the Cherkasy Oblast. The village belongs to an eponymous village council - the Ozeryshche village council.
  The population of the village is 238 people of 179 households in 2016.
  The village name came from four lakes that were located in there.
  Until the middle of the 20th century there was a hamlet - khutir Svynyntsi in the west of Ozeryshche, which was mentioned in Ulas Samchuk's book "Moroziv khutir". It was named Svynyntsi because there were a lot of wild swine in surrounding forests.
  There is a parish of the Seventh-day Adventist Church although most of religious people in the village are Eastern Orthodox Christians.
context_section_description: There were remains of several ancient settlements and a grave field of the Neolithic (V-III millennium BC), Chernyakhov culture and Kievan Rus found in a few kilometers east of the village, next to the former khutir Borok. In 1994 the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine conducted an archaeological expedition in settlements and their surroundings on the left bank of the Kaniv Reservoir. Among the others, there were archaeological findings of different historical eras, including of Kievan Rus period, found nearby Ozeryshche village.
  Before the Kievan Rus epoch there had been а boundary between Eastern Polans and Severians tribes in there. At the time of Kievan Rus the land belonged to the Principality of Pereiaslav, at the time of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Principality of Kiev and after the Union of Lublin to the Kaniv Starostwo of the Kiev Voivodeship of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
  Ozerishchi settlement is mentioned in the book of a Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Kryvosheia "Genealogy of Ukrainian Cossacks. Pereiaslav Regiment", as a part of Pereiaslav Regiment of the Cossack Hetmanate.
  The village has been known as Ozerishche since 1800.
  As of 1832 Ozerishche was a hamlet (hutir) of Khotski village, which held a mansion of the  nobleman Kostiantyn Illiashenko. On the Military Topographic Map of the Russian Empire 1846-1863, edition 1868, the khutir Ozeryshche is shown as nobleman's estate surrounded by the forest. There are khutir Svynytsi in the south-west and numerous small kutirs (homesteads) in the fields, next to Ozeryshche in the east.
  According to the registry books of St Archangel Michael's church in the middle of the 19th century there were 11 domestic workers at nobleman's mansion and 58 peasants living in the village.
  In 1860 a hamlet Rozdol-Berezovii (Роздол-Березовий) hutir was founded near the village in the east. Its first settler was Lipliave village born A. S. Bereza (А. С.Береза), who bought that land from а landlord Ms. Doroshkevych. He resold the bought land to other peasant families from Right-bank Ukraine (Kolesnyk's, Tsarenko's, Malusha's and others).
  According to the Russian Empire Census in 1897 the rural population of the Pereiaslav Povit (Uezd), which included Ozeryshche, consisted of 96.35% Ukrainian, 2.35% Jewish, 0.57% Russian and 0.06% Polish speaking people.
  In the early 20th century a small wooden St. Constantine's church was built on funds of a landlord Mr. Zavoiko.
  A diaspora Ukrainian writer	Mariya Livytska mentions Ozerysche in her book "On the edge of two epochs" (1972). In particular, the book says that according to the legend of witnesses in the mansion of landlords Illiashenko's, there was occasionally a ghost of woman appearing in there. Locals explained it by the fact that one of the very old mansion owners was an extremely cruel man and engaged in people torture. Since the building of the manor was dismantled, under its basement was discovered a mass grave of excruciated people.
caption: Old oak crosses at the village cemetery.
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