Basil, 1st Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański-Pietrusiewicz[1] (23 April 1816 – 25 October 1891) was a Polish wholesale merchant, landowner, town property owner[2] and philanthropist from Odessa.

[6] He had one daughter, Wilhelmine, who married a Swiss rentier and died at age 19 in Cannes,[7] as well a favoured place of her father and of the international nobility in general.

Born in the Austrian Empire, de Weryha-Wysoczański made his money, as his biographer informs us in 1892, with vodka supplies for the army during the Crimean War.

[9] In 1861 he was awarded the Silver Medal on the Ribbon of Saint Stanislas[10] and in 1876 received a confirmation of the title of Hereditary Chevalier of Galicia with the Wukry coat of arms,[2] extended to all direct descendants in the male line of his elder brother Gregory, some of whom still living to this day.

[14] In 1930 de Weryha-Wysoczański's life was made into a biographical novel by Ivan Fylypchak by the title Willpower (Lwów 1930; second edition Sambor 1999).