Samuel Skawronski

Said to have married in 1680 in Jekobpils, Latvia. Said to have escaped from the estate of Sapieha in Minsk Belarus, as a serf and did odd jobs in Latvia.

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The life of Catherine I was said by Voltaire to be nearly as extraordinary as Peter the Great himself. There are no documents that confirm the ascent of Catherine. The commonly accepted version is that Catherine was born in Ringen (Rõngu), in present-day Estonia. At the time this area was the Swedish province of Livonia. Originally named 'Marta Skowrońska', she was the daughter of Samuel Skowroński, later Samuil Skavronsky, a Latvian peasant of Polish origin, most likely a Catholic, and who was already a widower of one Dorothea Hann. Her mother has been listed on at least one site as Elisabeth Moritz, whom her father married at Jakobstadt in 1680. There is some speculation that her parents were runaway serfs. Some sources state her father was a gravedigger. Samuil and her mother died of plague around 1684 or 1685, leaving five children. She was taken by an aunt who sent her to be raised by Ernst Glück, the Lutheran pastor and educator who first translated the Bible into Latvian, in Marienburg. She was essentially a house servant. No effort was made to teach her to read and she remained illiterate throughout her life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_I_of_Russia

http://w.genealogy.euweb.cz/russia/skavron.html