Alexander Rastigaev - Paternal Grandfather

Our paternal grandfather was Alexander Lavrentev Rastigaev. Following his family's military tradition, Alexander served in a Don Cossack regiment as a young man. His first posting was to Svyatogor, in North West Siberia, followed by Vladislav on the River Don and finally in Suvalki (Lithuania). Alexander reached the rank of sergeant. The photo of Alexander, centre, his brother Theodore, left, and an unidentified brother (Constantin?) show the brothers wearing Don Cossack uniforms. The three brothers wear a marksman's badge on the breast of their uniform and Alexander wears a Don Cossack hat insignia.

Alexander and his brother Theodore migrated to London around 1902; Alexander was 29 and Theodore 22. Both brothers married migrant wives soon after arriving in London. In England, the brothers would state their occupations, and that of their father, as policeman; existing photos of them as Cossacks, and family oral history, firmly place them as Don Cossacks.

Alexander spoke of growing up on the shores of the Black Sea where they grew tobacco and grapes on their estate. This places them around the Gelendzhik region where an archaeological dig is currently being conducted on the "Rastegaev Dolmens". Other documents place the Rastigaev family as noblemen living in the Belgorod, Veronezh and Kursk regions of Russia during the 17th-19th centuries.

Alexander was employed in manual occupations in Britain; umbrella handle maker, skin dresser and furnace man. Alexander is remembered as a handsome, cultured gentleman who spoke 7 languages and was passionate about opera and painting; he loved animals and a dog and a canary were regular family pets. However, the family grew up in dire poverty due to his rapidly increasing family and poorly paid manual jobs. His job as a furnace man aggravated his asthma and the hard drinking, learned from his early Cossack days, meant that money was always in short supply.

Alexander was a socialist and would urge his sons to "return" to Russia to help in the Revolution movement; he was too old and ailing with asthma in 1917 to have returned home to fight with the revolutionaries himself.

Alexander's first wife Helena died aged 37 in 1921. Alexander remarried a widow in 1930. He died in 1934, aged 60, of asthma. He is buried in Glasgow, Scotland.

Theodore migrated to America with his wife and young family in 1907.