The cemetery name comes from the village of Kuzmino. Founded in 1714 by peasants- resettlers from villages of the Moscow, Yaroslavl, Vologda and Kostrona regions, later the village has grown in the rich many-populated village of Bolshoye Kuzmino. The imperial residence in Tsarskoye Selo was created by the village inhabitants’ work. Probably , Lukoyanov, a peasant of Kuzmino Village who made glazed tiles for the Tsarskoye Selo Palace of Catherine I, the Belomoins, peasants of Kuzmino Village, the palace contractors and house-owners of Tsarskoye Selo, Tatyana Ivanova, a peasant of Kuzmino Villahe who was a confidante of Empresses Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II, as well as an unknown woman-peasant of Kuzmino Village whose portraits were painted by the court painters on Emperor’s order were buried in this cemetery. In 1747 the wooden Church of the Assumption was transmitted from a closed cemetery located in the palace sloboda (district) of Tsarskoye Selo to the cemetery of the village of Kuzmino where the church was consecrated in the name of the Annunciation of the Mother of God. There are no earlier information about the cemetery and church, but the title of the village as “sloboda” in the late 1710s confirms about their presence.
The stone Church of the Annunciation with the Italian appearance of the outstanding beauty was built in 1783-1785 to the design of G. Quarenghi instead of the wooden cemetery church. The Icon of the Mother of God of Kazan, seen at the source at the foot of a hill to Kuzmino Village peasant Marfa Yekimova, was saved in this church for a long time.
The Kuzmino cemetery on an equal footing with the aristocratic Kazan cemetery was the burial place of many famous citizens of Tsarskoye Selo. V.I. Neyelov, the founder of the dynasty of Tsarskoye Selo architects, was buried here in 1782(9?) (The gravestone was restored in 1957). Burial places of his family and sons I.V. Neyelov and P.V. Neyelov were lost as well as the family burial place of the architects Kokorevs, the grave of the famous publisher P.P. Soikin and many others.
In 1941-1944 the village of Bolshoye Kuzmino and the Church of the Annunciation, that were at the defence leading edge, were destroyed. Defenders of blockade Leningrad took cover and died near the cemetery trees and the church walls. Now the monument the Home Guards of The Green Belt of Glory, two memorial guns of which are placed in front of the entrance into the cemetery, remember about their feat of arms. Belomoins, the
Ivanova, Tatyana
Kokorevs, the
Lukoyanov
Malyshevs, the
Neelov Ilya Vasilievich
Neelov Vasily Ivanovich
Quarenghi Giacomo
Soykin Peter Petrovich