According to Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin), a memorial book is “a spiritual realm where we invisibly meet with the souls of the living and the deceased… and their guardian angels”, an opportunity to pay a debt to the deceased, a test of faith and preparation for one’s own death.

Commemoration, or remembrance, is performed at the Liturgy of Preparation and litany, as well as during prayer and memorial services. The names that must necessarily be pronounced out loud at every service in a church or monastery are entered in a special book, which is called a memorial book. Monastic memorial books include the names of the founders of the monastery and its benefactors.

The memorial book of the Dormition Convent begins with the name of the monk Iona, also known as John the Hairy. According to tradition, John lived in seclusion on a hill outside Kargopol, and dug a spring there, called Hairy (Volosaty — in Russian). At that time, a chapel was erected near the spring, and religious processions were made to it on the eve of Kupala Night. The sick washed themselves in the spring, which was thought to have healing qualities.

The names of benefactors are listed below. Depending on the size of the contribution and the status of the donor, the name was entered for a certain period or forever.

The donors were both residents of Kargopol and members of the royal family; they donated not only money, but also books, church utensils and vestments (or the materials for them), as well as cattle and land.

The few surviving documents of the monastery allow us to restore some names.

The former Kargopol resident, later a St. Petersburg merchant, Fyodor Andreyevich Serebrennikov, bequeathed 2,000 rubles to the monastery in 1817. Another citizen, Ivan Ilyich Fedoseyev, in 1856, donated a two-story house on Kolobovaya Gorka on the Embankment Street with outbuildings: a black yard (a property the owner of which was obliged to pay various duties), a barn, two stables, a barn with a carriage house, a bathhouse and a plot of land.

A generous benefactor was Anna Mikhailovna Olonetskaya, who served Her Highness the Duchess of Mecklenburg, the Blessed Tsarevna Catherine Ivanovna.

The names of Grand Duke Nicholas and Alexandra are also recorded in the memorial book. Presumably, those were the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, who could have made a contribution to the Dormition Convent even before their accession to the throne.