There is a legend explaining the origin of the name of the village of Baran, located near Sudislavl. It is said that in ancient times, when tribute was collected from the population, a poor widow had her last lamb taken away. However, God did not allow the enemies to use the meat and turned the ram into stone. A church was decided to be built on this spot, laying the petrified ram in the foundation. Judging by the architectural features, the church was erected in that era. The writer Yablokov claims in one of his books that the church in the village of Baran was built in honor of the victory over the Tatars in 1549. However, at that time, there were no Tatars in these places, as they were expelled beyond the Volga in 1480, where they founded the Kazan Khanate, which ceased to exist in 1552. Yablokov also mistakenly refers to the Church of John the Theologian as a men's monastery. In fact, the Baranov Church was never a monastery. The reason why the Baranov parish was called 'monastery' is simple: the population of the surrounding villages belonged to the Kostroma Ipatiev Monastery. Later, during the Catherine era, the peasants were taken from the monasteries and transferred to the Treasury, making them state-owned, but the name 'monastery' remained.

In 1692, peasant Andrei Semyonov from the village of Otryshyeva received the right to build a new church at his own expense to replace the one that burned down in 1713. On the site of the wooden Nikolskaya church, a stone church with a bell tower and a fence was built in 1782, located in the center of the village at the cemetery. The village was named Baran-Nikolskoye after the Church of Nicholas the Wonderworker and the elevated terrain resembling a ram's forehead. In 1678, the parish of the Theological Church included 32 villages and 140 households.

The village belonged to various owners, including a voivode, a clerk of the discharge order, and military engineer I.G. Vyrotkov, who built a new fortress in Galich. After his death, the estate returned to the treasury. In 1586, Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible, at the request of his wife, Tsarina Irina Fyodorovna, transferred the village of Nikolskoye-Baran with its villages and pogosts to the Ipatiev Monastery 'for the remembrance of the souls of the Tsarina's parents.'

At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, there were two wooden churches in the village: a tent-like Church of Nicholas the Wonderworker and a 'kletsky' church of the evangelist John Chrysostom. According to local legend, the latter church was built in honor of the victory over the Tatars at the river Yazovka. Documents indicated that the village was located on the Korba River, although in reality it was far from it. The village had a mill known as the Shemyakinskaya, named after the Galich prince Shemyaka, and this name was preserved until the 20th century.