Russia's richest count married his serf actress in secret, she died weeks after their son's birth, and the boy inherited about 150,000 serfs

Praskovia Kovaleva was born in 1768, the daughter of a serf blacksmith on the Sheremetev lands in Yaroslavl province. At seven she was taken to the family estate at Kuskovo and trained for its serf theatre. She first appeared on stage in 1779 under the name Zhemchugova, "the Pearl," and Catherine II praised her singing. Count Nikolai Sheremetev, whom the historian Douglas Smith calls Russia's richest aristocrat, owned her. On 6 November 1801 they married at the church of St Simeon Stylites on Povarskaya Street in Moscow. The marriage was not announced, and she signed the register as Kovalevskaya. Their son Dmitry was born early in 1803. After the birth the count wrote to Alexander I about the marriage, and the emperor received the news "extremely favourably." Praskovia died on 23 February 1803. When the marriage became known, the aristocracy was outraged. In her memory Sheremetev endowed a hospice in Moscow with 500,000 rubles and 8,441 serfs. It opened in 1810, and its building now houses the Sklifosovsky Institute of Emergency Medicine. Sheremetev died on 2 January 1809. Under his will, four guardians ran the estate for Dmitry, whom the Russian Biographical Dictionary calls his only son. Dmitry came to own about 150,000 serfs and several hundred thousand desyatinas of land. He died in 1871 and was buried beside his father at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Saint Petersburg, where Praskovia also lies.