Bondari

Bondari lies on the Bolshoy Lomovis, a tributary of the Tsna northeast of Tambov. Its name recalls the coopers who made barrels and tubs from the timber of the surrounding forests. The village appears in seventeenth-century records; its people farmed and hunted, and also made charcoal, resin and tar. In 1725 Catherine I granted the estate to Vasily Pospelov, who brought serfs from other properties. A church and a cloth manufactory followed in the first half of the eighteenth century, making Bondari a centre of the district's textile production.