Pyotr Alexeyevich Golitsyn


Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Golitsyn was a Russian prince, a member of the Patriotic War and foreign campaigns, and a Catholic convert from Russian Orthodoxy.

Early life

Prince Golitsyn was born on 22 January 1792 in Moscow, Russian Empire. He was the eldest son of Prince Alexei Andreevich Golitsyn, master of the horse, and historian Alexandra Petrovna Golitsyna. Among his siblings were Yelizaveta Golitsyna, who became a nun.
His maternal grandparents were Senator and Lt.-Gen. Pyotr Stepanovich Protasov, and Anna Ivanovna. His mother and her sister, including writer Catherine Rostopchin and Vera Vasilchikova, were raised by their aunt, Countess Anna Protasova, a personal friend of the Empress Catherine II.

Career

In 1820, under the influence of his wife and her mother, he converted from Russian Orthodoxy to Catholicism. In 1837, his wife with their children had moved abroad, the prince bought land in Paris, France, where he settled with his family. He retired as a captain in 1838 from the Patriotic Wars against Napoleon and a Bogorodsky District Marshal of Nobility.

Personal life

In 1817, Prince Golitsyn married Elżbieta Antonovna Zlotnitskoy, a Polish girl who was in love with a famous poet Denis Davydov, in Kiev. Together, they were the parents of:
Prince Golitsyn died in Paris on 16 October 1842. His widow died in Blamont, in the Doubs department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France, in December 1866.

Descendants

Through his son Augustin, he was a grandfather of Princess Sophie Galitzine, who married the French aristocrat Paul d'Albert de Luynes, Duke of Chaulnes and Picquigny. They were the parents of Marie Thérèse d'Albert de Luynes and Emmanuel d'Albert de Luynes, 11th Duke of Chaulnes and Picquigny.