Urzhum

Urzhum lies in the Vyatka country where Mari communities lived before the Russian conquest of Kazan. A chronicle mentions Urzhum in 1554 in connection with the suppression of Mari resistance; historians have identified the place in that account with a Mari fortified settlement. A Russian fortress was established here in 1584, and by 1592 its first recorded governor was Vasily Golovin. Service men formed much of the early population, while townspeople and soldiers practiced crafts and trade.

Men from Urzhum joined the militias of 1611 and 1612 against Polish forces. In 1649 fifty of its infantrymen were sent to build the Simbirsk line, founding Urzhumskaya Sloboda there. The town entered Kazan Governorate in 1708 and became an uyezd center in the Vyatka Viceroyalty in 1780. Its coat of arms, approved the following year, depicted a wild goose against a blue field.