More than three hundred years ago, on the banks of the Krasnaya Sosna River in the Simbirsk district, brothers Matvey and Vasily Kezmin founded a settlement for their serf peasants, transferred from the neighboring Kurmysh district. Named after the first owners, the noble Kezmins, the new settlement was called the village of Kezmino. In 1693, a parish church was built here in honor of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the settlement began to be referred to as "the village of Pokrovskoye, also Kezmino," although in documents it was more often mentioned as the village of Kezmino.

In the late 18th century, the estate, which included about 700 serfs and more than four thousand desyatins of land, passed to a representative of the famous Simbirsk noble family, retired lieutenant Krotkov. He established a cloth factory in Kezmino, which remained one of the leading industrial enterprises in the Simbirsk province for a century starting in 1827.

Krotkov built a new stone church in the center of the village on the site of the wooden church that burned down in 1801. The main altar of the church was consecrated in honor of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary.

In the 1870s, Krotkov's heirs, the Filosov nobles, sold the cloth factory and lands to merchant Vasily Krylov from Simbirsk. He restored the Pokrovskaya church after a fire in 1883 that destroyed almost the entire village. Later, Krylov's widow, Marina Konstantinovna, rebuilt and expanded the church according to his will. At the initiative of her second husband, noble Seletskiy, the first public theater in the province opened in Kezmino. A famous church choir was organized, and the best rural school building in the district was constructed, which lasted until the 1960s.

In the early 19th century, there were 230 households and more than 1,100 residents in Kezmino. The cloth factory continued to operate and by 1913 came under the ownership of manufacturer Stepanov. Nearby, there was a small distillery owned by the heirs of merchant V. Aratskiy.