In the year 18––, the 27th day of October, the district court examined the case of the wrongful possession by Lieutenant of the Guards Dubrovsky, Andrei Gavrilovich, of an estate belonging to General-en-chef Troekurov, Kirila Petrovich, situated in * * * province in the village of Kistenevka, consisting of * * * male souls and of * * * acres of land with meadows and appurtenances. The case presents the following: on the 9th day of June past, in the year of 18––, the aforesaid General-en-chef Troekurov submitted to this court a petition to the effect that his late father, the collegiate assessor and chevalier Troekurov, Pyotr Efimovich, in the year 17––, on the 14th day of August, while serving as provincial secretary in a local office, did purchase from the gentleman and chancery clerk Spitsyn, Fadei Egorovich, an estate lying in the * * * township, in the aforementioned village of Kistenevka (which village, according to the * * * census, was then called the Kistenevka settlements), consisting, according to the 4th census, of * * * souls of the male sex with all their peasant chattels, the farmstead, with arable and non-arable land, woods, hayfields, fishing in the river, called the Kistenevka, and with all the appurtenances belonging to the estate and the wooden manor house, and, in short, everything without exception that his father, the village constable Spitsyn, Egor Terentyevich, gentleman, had left him as inheritance and that had been in his possession, not excluding a single soul, nor a single square foot of land, for the price of 2,500 roubles, the deed for which was signed on the same day in the * * * court of justice, and on the 26th day of that same August at the district court his father entered into possession and the seizin for it was recorded.—And finally, in the year 17––, the 6th day of September, by the will of God his father died, and meanwhile he, the petitioner, General-en-chef Troekurov, had been in the military service since the year 17––, almost from infancy, and for the most part had been on campaigns abroad, for which reason he could not have information of his father’s death, nor likewise of the property left to him. Now, having gone into full retirement from the service and returned to his father’s estates, located in * * * and * * * provinces, * * * and * * * districts, in various villages, comprising 3,000 souls in all, he discovers that, of the number of these above-listed estates mentioned in the * * * census, the souls (some * * * souls in that village at the present date * * *), with land and with all appurtenances, is without any title in the possession of the aforementioned Lieutenant of the Guards Andrei Dubrovsky, for which reason, presenting along with his petition the original deed of purchase which his father received from the seller Spitsyn, Troekurov requests that the said estate, removed from the wrongful possession of Dubrovsky, be placed at the full disposal of its rightful owner, Troekurov. And for the unlawful appropriation of it, with the profits he gained from its use, after making a proper inquiry into them, a penalty in accordance with the law be imposed on him, Dubrovsky, to his, Troekurov’s, satisfaction.
