Parent's hut in Kyrylivka (now village of Shevchenkove, Zvenyhorodka Raion, Ukraine). Most of the local population were then enslaved and reduced to poverty. Those uprisings were brutally suppressed in Cherkasy, Poltava, Kyiv, Bratslav and Chernihiv, disrupting normal social life for many years afterwards. According to the family legends, Taras's forefathers were Cossacks who served in the Zaporozhian Host and had taken part in the Cossack uprisings of the 17th and 18th centuries.

He was the third child after his sister Kateryna and brother Mykyta, in family of serf peasants Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko (1782?–1825) and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko (Boiko) (1782? – 6 August 1823), both of whom were owned by landlord Vasily Engelhardt. Taras Shevchenko was born on 9 March 1814 in the village of Moryntsi, Zvenyhorodka county, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (today Zvenyhorodka Raion, Ukraine). Contrary to the members of the society who did not understand that their activity led to the idea of an independent Ukraine, according to the secret police, he was a champion of independence. Though he had never been a member of the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Shevchenko was convicted in 1847 of explicitly promoting the independence of Ukraine, writing poems in the Ukrainian language and ridiculing members of the Russian Imperial House. He was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Shevchenko is also known for his many masterpieces as a painter and an illustrator. He also wrote some works in Russian (nine novellas, a diary, and an autobiography). His literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and, to a large extent, the modern Ukrainian language, though this is different from the language of his poems.

Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (Ukrainian: Тарас Григорович Шевченко, pronounced without the middle name 9 March 1814 – 10 March 1861), also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar (a kobzar is a bard in Ukrainian culture), was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist and ethnographer.

Kobzar taras shevchenko