 Bessarabian Bulgarians and Gagauz arrived from modern eastern Bulgaria as early as the second half of the 18th century.In 1817, they numbered 482 families in 12 localities, in 1856 – 115,000 people in 43 localities.Ukrainians had arrived Bessarabia since before 1812, and already in the 1820s they made up one third of the population of the most northern Hotin county.