Stanisław Plater

Stanisław Plater (Stanislovas Pliateris; 10 May 1784 – 8 May 1851) was a Polish-Lithuanian historian, geographer, officer.

Biography
Stanisław Plater was born in 1784 in Daugėliškis, Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He came from the noble Plater family. His father was Kazimierz Konstanty Plater, the last Lithuanian Vice-Chancellor, and his mother was Izabela née Borch, the first editor of a children's magazine in Poland, who published the weekly magazine Przyjaciel Dzieci in Warsaw in 1789–1792. Plater had ten siblings: 4 sisters and 6 brothers. One of his brothers was Ludwik August Plater (1775–1846), who was the senator-castellan of the Congress Poland who participated in the Kościuszko Uprising and November Uprising as well as a forestry activist.

He was a graduate of the Vilnius Main School. In 1806–1815, he served as an officer in the army of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Russian campaign, rising to the rank of lieutenant. In 1815, he became a captain in the army of Congress Poland, but was soon dismissed. He moved to Greater Poland, where he married Antonina Gajewska (1790-1866). He settled in Wroniawy, which was brought by his wife as a dowry. Later, he also lived for a long time in Poznań and in Paris.

He published a number of works on geography, military and history in Polish and French. In 1827, he published a pioneering statistical work, Statistical Atlas of Poland and surrounding countries. Moreover, he was an encyclopedist and author of the two-volume Mała Encyclopedia Polska.

He was awarded the title of Knight of the Military Order of the Duchy of Warsaw (Virtuti Militari) and the Order of the Red Eagle of the Kingdom of Prussia.

In 1851, he died in Wolsztyn and was buried in the parish church.