Vasily Georgiyevich Subbotin was born in 1888 into a peasant family. He started working at an early age of 13, right after graduating from elementary school. Vasily was engaged in clerical work, and in 1906 he became a clerk in the village of Sergievy Gorki. In 1913, Vasily Subbotin received a teacher’s license.
Subbotin had been collecting valuable items connected with the culture of his native land since childhood. In 1904, he already had an impressive collection of old coins and medals. His house became a storage for unique books, weapons, farm utensils, and handwoven linen.
In 1938, one of the students of the Fominki secondary school brought a stone axe and gave it to their teacher Vasily Subbotin. The object turned out to be a Bronze Age tool and sparked the idea of creating a local history club at school. Subbotin began to explain to the students how to learn more about the life of ancestors who lived in their native land by using old objects and remnants of the past.
The children were bringing a variety of items, and soon their number exceeded 1,500 units. Now there was enough to create a school museum of local lore. Vasily Subbotin talked about the importance of this idea from the stands of town meetings and published his thoughts in a regional newspaper. Soon everybody in the district knew that the teacher collected various relics.
Soon Subbotin’s collection welcomed several axes from the Neolithic period, bast shoes, a hand loom, and rushlight holders — the devices for fixing a burning miniature torch. Some of the most important exhibits entered the collection thanks to a local resident Nikolay Vasilyevich Morozov. Once he was building a stove and needed some clay: when he went to the river to get it, he found a whole jug of 18th-century coins.
On February 18, 1959, according to minutes No. 107 of the Gorokhovets District Executive Committee, a room in the Fominki House of Culture was allocated for housing the museum of local lore. Vasily Subbotin volunteered to become its director. The nonprofit museum of local lore was named after the Russian writer Nikolay Nekrasov.
The museum opened its doors a year later. It included 2,000 items from different eras, starting from ancient times to the present day. The Vladimir Regional Museum, the Hermitage and the Leningrad Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design provided considerable assistance in acquiring the exhibits. By 1967, the museum’s collection already contained 7,000 items. On June 22, 1978, the museum joined the Gorokhovets branch of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve.
Subbotin had been collecting valuable items connected with the culture of his native land since childhood. In 1904, he already had an impressive collection of old coins and medals. His house became a storage for unique books, weapons, farm utensils, and handwoven linen.
In 1938, one of the students of the Fominki secondary school brought a stone axe and gave it to their teacher Vasily Subbotin. The object turned out to be a Bronze Age tool and sparked the idea of creating a local history club at school. Subbotin began to explain to the students how to learn more about the life of ancestors who lived in their native land by using old objects and remnants of the past.
The children were bringing a variety of items, and soon their number exceeded 1,500 units. Now there was enough to create a school museum of local lore. Vasily Subbotin talked about the importance of this idea from the stands of town meetings and published his thoughts in a regional newspaper. Soon everybody in the district knew that the teacher collected various relics.
Soon Subbotin’s collection welcomed several axes from the Neolithic period, bast shoes, a hand loom, and rushlight holders — the devices for fixing a burning miniature torch. Some of the most important exhibits entered the collection thanks to a local resident Nikolay Vasilyevich Morozov. Once he was building a stove and needed some clay: when he went to the river to get it, he found a whole jug of 18th-century coins.
On February 18, 1959, according to minutes No. 107 of the Gorokhovets District Executive Committee, a room in the Fominki House of Culture was allocated for housing the museum of local lore. Vasily Subbotin volunteered to become its director. The nonprofit museum of local lore was named after the Russian writer Nikolay Nekrasov.
The museum opened its doors a year later. It included 2,000 items from different eras, starting from ancient times to the present day. The Vladimir Regional Museum, the Hermitage and the Leningrad Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design provided considerable assistance in acquiring the exhibits. By 1967, the museum’s collection already contained 7,000 items. On June 22, 1978, the museum joined the Gorokhovets branch of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve.
