Sementovsky, Oleksander

Sementovsky, Oleksander [Сементовський, Олександер; Sementovs'kyj], b 1821 in Semenohirka, Zolotonosha county, Poltava gubernia, d 1901. Forester, historian, ethnographer, and statistician; brother of Mykola Sementovsky and Kostiantyn Sementovsky. He graduated from the Nizhyn Lyceum (1840), and from 1843 to 1867 he worked as a forester in Kyiv gubernia and Vitsebsk gubernia. He founded a cabinet of natural resources at the Kyiv Palace of State Properties and discovered lignite in Zvenyhorodka county. He wrote book-length articles in Russian on the histories of Kamianets-Podilskyi (1865), the Pochaiv Monastery (1870), and the Nizhyn Lyceum (1881). He also compiled a statistical atlas and a collection of ‘Little Russian’ and Galician riddles (1851).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]