Gura Galbenei

Gura Galbenei lies beside the Cogâlnic, at the mouth of the Galbena valley in southern Moldavia. Its documented history emerges from the reorganisation of the borderlands adjoining the Budjak. After the Russo-Ottoman peace of 1774, Moldavian authority was restored over the northern part of a disputed frontier strip. A charter of December 1775 confirmed its boundary, and the new district of Hotărniceni subsequently received settlers.

Archival research identifies Gura Galbenei in records from 1795. By the early nineteenth century the settlement housed the administration of Hotărniceni; documents of 1808 could even use the village's name for the district. The census of 1817 recorded Gura Galbenei beside the Cogâlnic and Galbena streams. Its name must be distinguished from another contemporary village called Galbena in the Cogâlnic subdivision, later recorded as Fundul Galbenei. Settlement, district government and changing frontier arrangements together gave this river-valley community its place in the records of late Moldavia and early Russian Bessarabia.