Garsevanishvili , also known as Gersevanov is a Georgian

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 noble Baronial family (aznauri

Aznauri

Aznauri was a class of Georgian nobility; the term that was first applied to all nobles, but in the later Middle Ages narrowed to designate the petty nobles....

) active in both Georgia and Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

.

The family came to prominence in the early 18th century at the court of the Georgian king Vakhtang VI of Kartli

Vakhtang VI of Kartli

Vakhtang VI , also known as Vakhtang the Scholar and Vakhtang the Lawgiver, was a Wāli of Kartli, eastern Georgia, as a nominal vassal to the Persian shah from 1716 to 1724. Traditionally, he has been still styled as king of Kartli...

. A family legend traces their origin to Greek choristers who accompanied the Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 princess Helena Argyre

Helena Argyre

Helena Argyre or Argyropoulaina was a Byzantine princess of the Argyros family and Queen Consort of Georgia as the first wife of King Bagrat IV of the Bagratids. She was given off in marriage by her uncle, the Byzantine emperor Romanos III Argyros, to the boy-king Bagrat c. 1032...

 into Georgia upon her marriage to King Bagrat IV

Bagrat IV of Georgia

Bagrat IV , of the Bagrationi dynasty, was the King of Georgia from 1027 to 1072. During his long and eventful reign, Bagrat sought to repress the great nobility and to secure Georgia's sovereignty from the Byzantine and Seljuqid empires...

 in the 11th century. Members of the family were privileged to serve as archpriest

Archpriest

An archpriest is a priest with supervisory duties over a number of parishes. The term is most often used in Eastern Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholic Churches, although it may be used in the Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Church instead of dean or vicar forane.In the 16th and 17th centuries, during...

s at the Georgian court and as hereditary keepers of the Okona Icon of the Mother of God.Garsevanishvili family was included in the list of nobles of Georgia in 1860 in the so called "Barkhatnaia Kniga" published in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

.

They followed Vakhtang VI in his Russian exile in 1724 and entered the Russian service, adopting the surname of Gersevanov (Garsevanov). They were granted estates in the governorate

Guberniya

A guberniya was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor , a word borrowed from Latin ,...

s of Poltava

Poltava Governorate

The Poltava Governorate or Government of Poltava was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate which was split between the Chernigov Governorate and Poltava Governorate with an...

, Kharkov and Yekaterinoslav. Those who remained in Georgia were reconfirmed among the nobility by a charter of King Erekle II

Erekle II

Erekle II was a Georgian monarch of the Bagrationi Dynasty, reigning as the king of Kakheti from 1744 to 1762, and of Kartli and Kakheti from 1762 until 1798. In the contemporary Persian sources he is referred to as Erekli Khan, while Russians knew him as Irakli...

 in 1788.

The notable members of the family were also Mikhail Nikolayevich Gersevanov (1830-1907), an engineer who supervised numerous road-building projects in the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

; and his son Nikolay (1879-1950), also an engineer specializing in ground mechanics.