Rușii de Vede

Rușii de Vede is a market town on the Vedea in the plains of Teleorman. Its merchants dealt in the products of the surrounding countryside and maintained connections with Brașov across the Carpathians. A company of mounted soldiers stationed here gave the town a military as well as a commercial role in southern Wallachia.

Two German pilgrims returning from Jerusalem recorded a stop at a place called Russenart in 1385, identified with the town. Merchants from Rușii de Vede appear in the registers of Brașov in 1503, and a princely deed of 1526 uses the full name. During the sixteenth century it became the seat of Teleorman county, a distinction it retained into the nineteenth century. By 1831 its trades included grocers, furriers, shoemakers, coppersmiths and dyers.