His wife, Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, the period table inventor's mother, had to go to work to support the family immediately after Ivan Mendeleev's death by reopening the family glass factory. That worked until Dmitri Mendeleev was 15 and the factory caught fire. The children were sent to live with their uncle and aunt in St. Petersburg while Maria went to serve a year-long prison sentence for negligence that she received because there was no help for her from Moscow or St. Petersburg authorities. She came out of prison having lost everything: her husband, her son, and her job. All that remained was hope that someone would take pity on her family and allow her to reopen the glass factory. Such a person turned out to be Ivan Mendeleyev who had been taught how to run the business by his father. He now offered her money to leave politics and start a new life somewhere else. Maria Dmitrievna agreed and they moved to Yaroslavl where Ivan Mendeleyev bought a house for his wife to open a school where she could teach chemistry. Ivan Mendeleev married for the second time to another woman named Antonia Lebedeva whose family owned a large estate near Yaroslavl. She was 24 years old and had two children from a previous marriage. He divorced her to marry Maria Dmitrievna but he did not want any children with this second wife.