Reverend Omelian Petrushevych

Rev. Omelian Petrushevych was born in 1830 and died in 1906. He is referred to in the Rodovid I as "Emil". He was the parish priest for Busk and the Busk dekan. He was married to Savyna Kotsiuba and was the father to six children: Savyna, Stepan, Emilia, Yevhen, Maria and Roman.

Rev. Omelian was ordained a priest in 1854 and became an assistant to his distant relative Rev. Mykhailo Petrushevych (from the second branch of the Petrushevych family line), the parish priest in Duliby, near Stryi, while in 1856 he became the chaplain administrator in Lubinets, Stryi county. In 1860, he was appointed parish priest for the town of Busk, the former Princely Capital, with the local St. Mykolaj Church, and lived at the parish home-residence in the suburb of "Dovha Storona", alongside the sister Church of St. Paraskevia, that was built in second half of the 17th century. At this location were found also the parish agricultural buildings, while just across from them, was a large field, with a garden and wheat fields (sinozhat), and to the south was the River Solotvyna. In this garden grew an old lypa tree, around which was attached a wide table, on which Rev. Omelian would place his collection of old artifacts and would carve out in wood various home implements. There would also take place all kinds of lively conversations and discussions around the table with newly arrived guests on church, political and community themes, that had a great influence on the political upbringing of his three sons. The distance from the residence to the local church was not large - about 500 paces, but Rev. Omelian in his senior years would hardly ever celebrate mass there, leaving it to the local assistant catechists, while he would focus on the regular unsung Sunday masses at the St. Paraskevia Church. In 1863, Rev. Omelian became the dekan in Busk. On three occasions (navorotamy), beginning in 1863, he was appointed Vice-Marshall of the County council in Kamianets Strumylova and from that time until 1898, almost without interruption, he was the chair of the local Busk School Board, which was comprised of six communities and seven schools. As part of the County Council, he was also vidporuchnyk to the Surrounding (Okruzhnyj) School Board in Sokal. While actively participating in all of these institutions, Rev. Omelian worked on behalf of the Busk town dwellers. Especially due to his influence and efforts, a two-class public school with Ukrainian language instruction was set up in the suburb of "Dovha Storona", near St. Paraskevia Church. In the last two decades of the 19th century it was situated in a refurbished building, according to school board regulations, that was originally an Ulansky barn. The last school director of Ukrainian ancestry was Toma Wanjo. With the advent of the 20th century and the continuing deterioration of the school building, the school was moved to a private residence, and eventually, after the death of Rev. Omelian, the city School Board closed it down by amalgamating it with the city's six-Class Public School in the neighbourhood of the St. Mykolaj Church, with Polish being the language of instruction and only the Ukrainian language and Greek Catholic religion being taught in Ukrainian.

Though a significant number of priests among Rev. Omelian's contemporaries belonged to the so-called " Old Ruthenian" camp, he was a conscious Ukrainian narodovets, and was very active not only in the spiritual realm, but also in the community and political fields of the then Ukrainian life in Galicia. With his talents and furvent community interests and cultural interactions, he emerged as a leading force among the Ukrainian clergy. He especially enjoyed literature, history, archeology; he had a large library with many Ukrainian publications from both sides of the River Zbruch including well preserved copies of Ivan Kotliarevsky's "Eneida", Taras Shevchenko's "Kobzar" and Rev. Markian Shashkevych's "Rusalka Dnistrova" and many other priceless and rare books. This library was often used by Rev. Omelian's protege, the son of a Busk city dweller, Rev. Dr. Josyp Botsian, the rector of the Spiritual Seminary in Lviv and the Lutsk bishop. Books were borrowed also by Dr. Semen Demydchuk, a Busk native, who on the request of the "Ukrainian Supreme Council", during World War I, left Vienna in 1915 for the United States where he eventually settled. He describes this in his personal memoirs entitled "Half a Century of Community Work 1905 - 1955", that were published in New York in 1956 by the publishing house of "Carpathian Star" (Karpatska Zoria) Society. Dr. S. Demydchuk wrote the following: "During my youth, I learned to help serve mass from the cathechist Rev. Wasyl Lysko, and went to serve the then quite elderly Rev. Omelian Petrushevych and that is how I got to know about the family Petrushevych library". Also spending considerable time at the home of Rev. Omelian was his shuryn Julian Romanchuk, the then leader of the Ukrainian movement in Galicia, high school professor, parliamentarian to the Galician Sejm and Vienna Parliament and its Vice President, chosen in the month of February 1910.

All of his life, Rev. Omelian untiringly collected icons and various ancient artifacts at churches and private homes, put together a fabulous library, a valuable numismatic collection and all of this as was written in his article entitled "A Few Notes to the biography of the Petrushevych family line from the 16th century that settled in Galicia" he pledged to "present it as a gift to the Ukrainian Scientific Society to show that the Petrushevych family never forgot its Ruthenian origins and works incessently for the good of the Ruthenian nation and with God's help the Petrushevych descendents will do the same". This article, in which Rev. Omelian brought together important and valuable facts from the life of several members of the Petrushevych family, was written in Busk on December 24, 1898 on the foundation of family traditions and a "genealogical chart" of his grandfather Rev. Stepan Petrushevych, the parish priest in Dobriany.

The Busk (former Princely Capital) parish priest and deacon, Rev. Omelian Petrushevych, asserts in his article entitled "A Few Notes to the biography of the Petrushevych family line from the 16th century that settled in Galicia" that the Petrushevych family line, in step with family tradition, is descendent of an ancient boyar family of the Duchy of Lithuania, which designated itself with the heraldic emblem "Piastuk" (Pienstnik) and that one member of the Petrushevych family was a pysar (chronicler) in this Grand Duchy. This piece of information about the origins being from a Lithuanian boyar family is true, and is referred to in both above-mentioned documents. As for Melchior Petrushevych being a chronicler on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is probably less so, as he was a city Upitsky chronicler and a poborets of this land under the aigis of the Sejm in the year 1601 (and not 1700). This is mentioned by Rev. Kasper Niesietski in step with Rev. Antin Petrushevych, in his work "Polish Coat of Arms", where he includes the Petrushevych family heraldic symbol "Piastuk" (Pienstnik) with the following description: " Two human hands, that are holding a yellow apple in a red background, the manshety of the sleeves ar light blue, the stem of the apple is turned towards the bottom, and on the helmet there are three strusyni feathers. This emblem is further described by Paprocki ("Klejnoty") and Potocki ("Catalogue of Coat of Arms"). Others refer to the coat of arms as "Pliesnik", but no one writes about to whom this coat of arms belongs. In the Petrazamta, cap. 56, one can find many families, that have hands in their a coat of arms, including those from France, Misny, Slensk and Normandy, and several of them have hands that are holding a "ladder".

As to Melchior Petrushevych, there is a note that accompanies the "Coat of Arms of the Vitebsk nobility" that confirms that he and his family Yurij and Petro Petrushevych were landowners in the Polonga county of the Principality of Zhmud. Thery were also exemplary and generally-designated civil servants. Their coat of arms is named "Tromby tshy myslivske" on a white background, with five feathers on top of the helmet.

The Petrushevych families were widely scattered across the far reaches of Eastern Europe, starting from the lands of the former Principality of Zhmud, across Lithuania, Belorus, Poland and ending in Eastern Galicia. Depending on the location of their permanent residence and their boyar coat of arms, the Petrushevych families divided into numerous families, that with the passage of time led to their estrangement, leading to their losing a sense of family closeness and blood relationship.

Rev. Omelian died in the first years of the 20th century. Following his death, his family transferred all of his collections to the Shevchenko Scientific Society and to the Ukrainian National Museum in Lviv. In the middle of the largest hall of this Museum stood an old, carved table, that was of great artistic value, and was from his collection. The library and archives were taken over by his son-in-law, Rev. Matij Popovych, the parish priest from the village of Pavliv, who was often visited by historian Professor Dr. Ivan Krypiakevych from Lviv, who would take the most valuable items for the Shevchenko Scientific Society Museum. Following the death of Rev. Popovych, the collection was taken over by Rev. Izydor Sokhotsky, the grandson of Rev. Omelian. Within the archive, in addition to the personal letters, a memoir was found that referred to the Polish so-called "January" uprising of 1863, and specifically to the participation of Galician Poles, and mostly from the Busk county. They were written on thin leafs of paper and rewritten later in a separate note book by Lutsk bishop Kyr Dr. Josyp Botsian, who then was still a high school student. All of this was given by Rev. Izydor Sokhotsky to the Shevchenko Scientific Society archive in Lviv. In addition, there was also an unsystematically developed chronicle of events in Busk and notes that pertained to the life of Rev. Omelian's children. This chronicle was destroyed in Priashiv, Slovakia during the bombardment of the railway station by Bolshevik planes, destroying all klunky of Rev. Izydor Sokhotsky. Rev. Omelian had a wonderful habit to write down in the final pages of church book "Status animarum" different kinds of events from the local Busk community and from the general life of the Ukrainian lands and nation. These notes are very interesting for historians and are located at the church archives in Busk.