Christian Ignatius Borissow

Biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Ignatius_Borissow

Birth & christening data: http://hiski.genealogia.fi/hiski?en+t1078022

Christian Ignatius, a son of the vicar of Ruokolahti parish in Southeastern Finland, then part of Russia, had to quit his secondary school education in 1803 at 15 years of age, when both his parents had died and presumably there was no money to pay for school and board in Porvoo/Borgå, located some 300 km away from home and during those years even across the border in another country (Sweden).

It is known that he later worked as a merchant in St Petersburg, the capital of Russia, and moved from there to Great Britain. He was married in Bristol, England, in December 1819 with Sarah Peters (see marriage source in Sarah's profile) and had published his first book in the same year. He also functioned as a Consul of the Russian empire. At this time he was already known as Christian Ignatius Borissow.

More information about Christian Ignatius Borissow and about his descendants in England and elsewhere, can also be found at this website created by Tamsin Stone:

http://freespace.virgin.net/stone.s451/index.html

Christian and his relatives in Finland (from 1809 an autonomous grand duchy belonging to the Russian empire) seem to have lost contact after 1833, as the history of the family Ignatius published e.g. in the book Ignatius-suku ("The Ignatius Family", 1942) documents only seven of his ten children - up to the birth of Cornelius (1833). Thanks to the above mentioned website, the contacts between Christian's descendants and the Ignatius family in Finland have been re-established about 170 years later, in the first decade of the 21st century.

We can only assume the reasons behind Christian's decision to change his family name to a Russian style Borissow, which actually means "Bengt's son" - perhaps this was in remembrance of his father, and also in order to emphasise his origins in the Russian empire, one of his specialties as a teacher of commerce and languages.