Years active 1820s - 1880s Name Sofja Shcherbatova | Died February 3, 1885 | |
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Full Name Sofja Stepanovna Apraksina
Sof'ya Stepanovna apraksina Born 6 December 1798 ( 1798-12-06 ) Moscow, Russian Empire Occupation philanthropist
charity organizer Spouse(s) Prince Alexey Shcerbatov Parents Cathrin Galitzine, Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin Grandparents Stepan Fyodorovich Apraksin, Princesse Moustache, Vladimir Galitzine Great-grandparents Ekaterina Andreevna Usakova, Andrej Ivanovic Usakov, Petr Grigorievic Chernyshev | ||
Princess Sofja Stepanovna Shcherbatova (Russian: Софья Степановна Щербатова, née Apraksina; 1798, in Moscow, Russian Empire – 3 February 1885, in Moscow) was a prominent Russian philanthropist, the Dame Chevalier of the Order of Saint Catherine (1822). Princess Shcherbatova (since 1817, when she married Prince Alexey Shcherbatov) was the founder of The Grand Dames Helping the Poor charity (Damskoye Popetchitelstvo o Bednykh, 1844) which she remained the chairman of till 1876, the Nikolskaya Community (which proved particularly effective during the cholera epidemic in 1848 in Moscow and later during the Crimean War), many orphanages and shelters for homeless and elderly people. An heir to the famous Apraksin family, she was greatly interested in literature and arts, kept a fashionable Moscow salon and was a friend of Alexander Pushkin, Pyotr Vyazemsky and Mikhail Lermontov, among others.
