Russian Royalty. She received recognition in Russian history when she became the "First Empress of Imperial Russia." Her life story is one of rags to riches. Having a diverse heritage, she was born Marta Skowronska, theDaughter of Samuel Skowronski fugitive Polish-Lithuanian peasant , in a Baltic country under Swedish rule. She was orphaned at the age of three when her parents died of the plague, and sent to stay with an aunt. Later, she was sent to be a servant of a Protestant Bible scholar, Ernst Gluck, who may have given her the only education she ever had. When she was seventeen, the Gluck family arranged a marriage to a Swedish soldier. At this time, the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden for an outlet to the Baltic Sea was on-going. Eight days after the wedding, the Russian army invaded her village and the Swedish army retreated taking her groom. She and the Glück family were taken as "wins of the war" to Moscow to be laborers. She was assigned to be a personal servant girl to several Russian Army officers including Czar Peter's friend, Prince Alexander Menshikov. It was in Alexander's private quarters that Catherine and Peter first became acquaintances. After meeting Peter, she soon became romantically involved with him. After their first child was born, she converted from being Catholic to Russian Orthodox with the name of Catherine Alexeyevna. She help to manage Peter's personal and political life. In 1707 they were "secretly married"; they produced a total of nine children with only two daughters living to adulthood: Anna and Elizabeth. During these years, Peter's wife Eudoxia was in a monastery where she had been banished by the czar. After the church granted a divorce from Eudoxia, Peter officially married Catherine at Saint Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg on February 9, 1712, and she was given the title of "Czarina Catherine I of Russia" in 1724. When the czar died without a named heir, Catherine's supporters, including Menshikov, made her the first Empress of Imperial Russia. After a two-year reign, she died of pneumonia. Since the couple had a morganatic marriage, there was no legal heir to the throne. The heir apparent became Peter II, the grandson of Peter the Great and his first wife Eudoxia. Nearly twenty years later, their daughter Elizabeth became heir to the throne.