According to family legend, the great-grandfather of the famous pilot Valery Pavlovich Chkalov was a barge hauler. He walked along a towrope from Nizhny Novgorod to Rybinsk, dragging boats against the current. The grandfather, Grigory Mikhailovich Chkalov, also was a barge hauler in his youth. Then, after getting married, he took up farming in the village of Vysokovo, which was located not far from Nizhny Novgorod.

Grigory Mikhailovich Chkalov was short, heavily built, and stocky, endowed with remarkable strength. He had several sons, who subsequently gave rise to a large Chkalov dynasty.

One of Grigory Mikhailovich’s children called Pavel worked at the Sormovo factory while he was still a young boy. He was given a fairly easy task, which was forging nails. However, the young man wanted to master a serious craft. Yielding to Pavel’s request, his father sent him to study riveting and coining in Yaroslavl.

When Pavel Grigoryevich Chkalov returned, he was a great boiler master. He began working in the boiler shop of the Sormovo factory and was very efficient, so much so that he was given the most important orders. For example, it is known that he participated in making riveted trusses for the Nizhny Novgorod Fair.

At the age of 19, Pavel Grigoryevich Chkalov married a 17-year-old girl from a simple peasant family. Her name was Irina Ivanovna, née Kozhirnova. In 1894, the young couple moved to Vasilyovo.

Pavel Chkalov was highly respected in the Vasilyovo workshops. The manager of the riverboat yard, Richard Karlovich Masing, used to say to him,

Contemporaries noted that Chkalov senior was distinguished by physical strength, as well as a strong-willed and firm character, he always kept his word and fulfilled his promises. He was not particularly talkative, but at the same time, his house often had guests.

Even though he did not have a primary education himself, Pavel Chkalov strove to send his five children to school. His eldest daughter, Anna Pavlovna Chkalova, eventually became a teacher.

Nikolay Pavlovich Chkalov, after four classes of a Realschule, volunteered for the army in 1914 and died during the war. Alexey Pavlovich Chkalov graduated from the Karl Marx Moscow Institute, then the Leningrad Institute of Technology, and became an engineer. Sofia Pavlovna Chkalova studied at a gymnasium in Gorodets. As for Valery Pavlovich Chkalov, he is known to everyone as an outstanding pilot and a Hero of the Soviet Union.