Chembar

Chembar arose on the Maly Chembar River in the early eighteenth century. Its first settlers included both peasants owing tribute and serfs brought from other estates: in 1713 the landowner Protasyev moved nineteen serfs here from Kashira district, and another proprietor brought eleven more the following year. The village, later called Nikolskoye, became the district town of Chembar in 1780. From 1816 the family of the district physician Grigory Belinsky lived on its market square; his son Vissarion spent much of his childhood there before leaving for school in Penza.