The text describes Teofipol, located in Volyn Governorate, originally called Czołhan due to being the hereditary property of the Czołchański family. The settlement was also linked to the Sapieha family and to Józef Aleksander Jabłonowski, who changed the name of the settlement in memory of his daughter Teofila (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1878, Series 3, T:5, pp. 91, 93, after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

Teofilpol

From where the names of populated settlements, villages and fortresses arose in Ruthenia, it is difficult to say with certainty, and close research in this regard would probably lead to interesting conclusions. For the most part, it seems, they were the work of accident. The people, by nature, sprightly and dny, created innumerable legends about almost every locality in their country, highlighted by anything - be it a rivulet, a rock, a ravine or a basin - and more still by the traces of ancient human habitation, remnants of the wanderings of pre-Christian peoples in this land.

All this led the later Slavs to the sounds of the names they gave to the various localities of their homeland. In general, the origins of this terminology are obscure, mythical. In later times, until almost the end of the 17th century, a whole host of names of noble families arose, taking their origins from the names of land, lands, granted to the progenitors of these families, either by the reigning Lithuanian princes Lubart or Świdrygiełło, or by Polish kings, notably Kazimierz Jagiellończyk, who contributed most to the population of Volhynia. These names persisted even during the ennoblement of these families. This is how we can see in Wołyń: the Łabuńskis were heirs to a settlement first, then to the town of Łabunia, the Iwanickis to Iwanica, the Didkowskis to Didkowice, and thousands of others. Even the families of Greater Poland, such as the Zbaraski, Zaslavskiy, Ostrogskiy, Chervetskiy, Dubrovicky families, do not have a different beginning, but from the name of the estate granted to them.

The number of names of settlements derived from the names of settlers in Ruthenia is equally small, and even these few exceptions belong to later times. The 18th century created a new nomenclature for villages and towns in Ruthenia, especially in Volhynia. The local magnates, the Lubomirskis, the Jablonowskis and others, having either inherited by marriage or by purchase the former noble fortunes which bore the names of their first owners, in an unjustified attempt of vanity tried to change these names into others, most often derived from the godforsaken names of their wives and daughters. This gave rise to the colourless, meaningless Annopole, Antopole, Ludwipole, Adatopole and so on.

However, all this calendar nomenclature, with the favourite ending in "pol" and "pole", although officially sanctioned, in reality, in colloquial speech, in only a few exceptions, has survived; for our people, faithful to their traditions sanctified by custom, in spite of pressure, in spite of violence and violence sometimes resorted to, have not adopted these innovations: For him, Ludwipol did not cease to be Siedliszcze (Seliszcze), Antopol Bojarka and so on. The history of the small Volhynian town of Teofilpol in the Starokonstantinov district, not far from the Austrian border, and which, like all local towns, had its own eventful history, its own days of fame, and the hour of its complete decline, has brought us back to these metamorphoses.

In documents dating back beyond the 18th century, there is no mention of Teofilpol; the name is a new creation. Originally, the town was called Czołhan and was the hereditary property of the Czołhański family, an old Russian nobility, still numerous at the beginning of the last century on the Volhynian burghs, but already impoverished, apparently, when they had to get rid of their ancestral seat, the town of Czołhan, although they had saved it to the last. We do not know by what route, but it is enough that already in the mid-17th century this Czołhan was in the possession of the powerful Sapieha family.
Józef Aleksander Jabłonowski, Voivode of Novgorod, famous in the first half of the 18th century for his eccentricities and learning, was lord of Volhynia and heir to Lachowiec, general of the Lithuanian artillery, temporarily became the owner of the Sapiega town of Czołhan and the surrounding estate, which, united with his Lachowiec estate, comprised an area of land far exceeding that of any German principality.

From this marriage, his only surviving daughter, Teofila, the favourite child of the prince-voivode, took over the entirety of his legacy and the Sapieha estates inherited by her mother. Legend has it that when the disobedient local peasants going to fairs in Czołhan could not get used to the new name for a long time, the proud voivode had the court cossacks stationed at the town's turnpike painfully remind them of the nomenclature.

Whether this anecdote was invented on account of the otherwise famous stranger about whom a great number of novels still circulate in Volhynia, it is difficult to say - it is only certain that for once, contrary to the proverb, the lesson has been learnt, and the local peasants and Jews do not cease to refer to Teofilopol as Czołhan.Therefore, the heroine of this anecdote, Princess Teofila Jabłonowska, having also married Sapieha, Józef, a Lithuanian countryman, returned home to their former family estate of Teofilpol, enlarged only by Lachowiecczyzna, her father's legacy. From then on, both these estates remained inseparably in one hand until the last days. They were frightened by the gloomy walls of the Lachowiec castle, where the shadow of the menacing Voivode Jabłonowski still lingered, and so on the ruins of the former larch manor house of the Czołhański family they built not a defensive castle, but a spacious palace situated by a pond in a cleft.

Their son, born here in Teofilpol, duke Aleksander Sapieha, a literary warrior and Napoleon's adjutant, who ended his life in 1812 in Derechyn, known in our literature as the author of "Journeys in Slavonic Countries", must have learned from this book collection. In 1794, Duke Aleksander married Anna Zamojska, daughter of Andrzej, Chancellor of the Crown Prince of Poland, and Konstancja Czartoryska, who, having buried her young husband, lived to a ripe old age herself, having reached the end of her life in Paris in 1859, aged a hundred and some years. The son of this marriage is the surviving Duke Leon Sapieha, Speaker of the Galician Sejm and first founder of the Galician Railways. Duchess Anna, his mother, was perhaps the last type of old Polish mothers. One could write volumes about her life and virtues. With her death, the Teofilpol and Lachowiec estates became part of the government estate, and the town of Teofilpol itself was granted to a descendant of General Liprandi, in recognition of his father's military services.

The new heir began his reign by destroying the old palace, the seat of several generations of the Sapieha family, and transforming it into a tasteless country house. The palace's more valuable furnishings, library and paintings had already been transported to Krasiczyn, the estate of the princes in Galicia; all that remained of the Sapiehs' memorabilia was the old palace park, with its majestic trees.

Not far from the Sapiezhins' palace in Teofilpol, stands the post-Trinitarian church, converted from 1830 into a parish for secular priests. The local Trinitarians maintained schools attached to the monastery, which were even somewhat popular in the area, although Łukaszewicz, probably out of ignorance, omitted to mention them in his "History of Schools". After the Trinitarians moved out, their book collection and other scientific collections were used, as well as premises suitable for a scientific institution, and a district government school was established here. I would like to mention the Czołhanskis, the Sapiehs, and finally the local monks, who bought out our brothers from the asylum, educated them in science and the faith, and left children behind, etc. But, unfortunately, they are mute, silent witnesses of the past of the old Czolhan!

In spite of all this, Teofilpol belongs to one of the neatest towns in Volhynia. The town has a pharmacy and two doctors, one of whom, the aged Dr. Hartmann, a native of Vilnius and patriarch of Volhynia's physicians, has been a true benefactor of the area for more than half a century. He cured our grandfathers and fathers, and many of our children owe him their lives; the poor call him their father.