Elizabeth Temkina
Elizabeth Grigorievna Temkina was the once-alleged daughter of Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin.
Biography
According to a number of historical testimonies and family legends, which, however, do not have documentary evidence and are disputed by most historians, Grigory Potemkin and Catherine the Great were secretly married. In 1775, a female infant appeared in Potemkin's house, who was named Elizaveta Grigorievna Temkina.The girl was born secretly, but at the court there were rumors that the Empress was her mother, though this is now regarded as unlikely. Elizabeth was brought up in the Samoilov household, her guardian being Alexander Nikolaevich Samoilov, the son of Potemkin's sister Maria Alexandrovna Samoylova, which could lend some credence to the rumor that her father was one of the Potemkins or a relation of theirs. But tellingly, Elizabeth was never acknowledged by Catherine, in contrast to Count Aleksey Grigorievich Bobrinsky, the illegitimate son of the Empress.
In 1780s, the physician Ivan Filippovich Beck, who treated the grandchildren of the Empress, became the girl's guardian. Elizabeth finished her education in a boarding school.
On April 10, 1794, she received the estate of Mezhigore near Kiev and huge estates in the Kherson province.
In 1797, Alexander Samoilov, Elizabeth's former guardian, commissioned the artist Vladimir Borovikovsky to paint a portrait of Elizabeth, who was 22 years old at the time: "Let Elizaveta Grigorievna be painted in such a way that her neck is open, and her hair lies on it in disheveled curls without order." The portrait was ready in a year.
Her family later lived in near Kiev in the town of Mezhyhirka. The character of Elizaveta Temkina was described in different ways – some called her spoiled, self-confident and uncontrollable, others – a modest woman and a good mother.
Elizabeth died on the 6th of June, 1854, aged 78 years.
Family
On 4 June 1794, Elizabeth was married to Second-Major. Her husband was a wealthy Greek, who had been invited from Greece to join the retinue of the emperor Paul I son Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, in order to teach him Greek in preparation to the reinstatement the Byzantine monarchy with Catherine's grandson Constantine as emperor, but this plan was never realized. Nevertheless, because of this Kalageorgi had close ties to the imperial family and would come to be the governor of Kherson and then of Ekaterinoslav.The couple had 10 children together:
- Varvara Ivanovna
- Ekaterina Ivanovna
- Alexander Ivanovich
- Grigory
- Nadezhda
- Vera
- Nikolai
- Konstantin
- Sofia
- Anastasia