As it turns out, I do have a source for Bp Nicholas’ visit in May 1892. According to Dom Augustine de Angelis in the Fond Du Lac Reporter (quoted in the Milwaukee Sentinel, 5/16/1892), “Bishop Nicholas, head of the Greek church in America, visited the Old Catholic mission at Dyckesville, last Monday. He has been in America only a month and a half, but has already made his episcopal visitation of the Orthodox and Old Catholic churches, preparatory to his annual visitation of the vast region of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. [...] His first impressions of America and Americans are very favorable, and he sympathizes with us in our hopes of seeing an Orthodox American church, in which mass shall be said in English, French, German, etc., until all have become so American that English shall be the common tongue of all…”

So Bishop Nicholas, too, was lumping the Wisconsin Old Catholics in on his pastoral visit to the middle of the country. By September, Vilatte had gone off and created his own American Catholic Church.

I wonder if the Episcopalians have any records. Grafton seems to have warned Bp. Vladimir about Vilatte. He may have had better luck with Bp. Nicholas, as the latter had it seems a cordial relationship with the Episcopalian bishops in San Francisco.

What is interesting is the timing: both Bps. Vladimir and Nicholas were receiving uniates nearby who had, like Vilatte, come to see then in SF; the foundation of a Church in nearby Chicago, the enactment of the claim to jurisdiction over North (and South) America, etc. I wonder how far Dyckesville was from the road between Chicago and Minneapolis in those days.

If I come across anything on Bp. Nicholas visiting, I’ll share. I’m intrigued if the oral histories of the Belgian at Green Bay
http://www.uwgb.edu/library/spc/local/belgian_oral.asp
if they have anything, along with any local papers.

It’s just a theory, but I suspect that Bishop Nicholas visited Vilatte to figure out exactly what he was dealing with. Bishop Nicholas was a smart man and a good bishop, and he probably discerned immediately that Vilatte was not really Orthodox at all. He probably required Vilatte to be more normatively Orthodox, and Vilatte probably said he’d rather be more independent. Hence, a few months later, the creation of the American Catholic Church and the beginning of Vilatte’s full-fledged vagante career.

If you find any contemporary sources for Bishop Nicholas’ visit, please let me know. I’d like to publish an article on the whole 1891-92 Vilatte/Vladimir/Nicholas connection.

1890 or early 1891 – Bishop Vladimir (Sokolovsky) of Alaska, the American representative of the Moscow Patriarchate, formally received a parish of Swiss Old Catholics at Dyckesville, near Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, as Western Rite parish.

May 1891, Bishop Vladimir (Sokolovsky), the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States, referred to the Old Catholic flock of Green Bay contacting him through their cleric Fr. Vilatte (a big name in vaganti circles) as “true ‘Old Catholic-Orthodox Christians’ [now] under the patronage of our Church,” after approving their confession of Faith and acts receiving them into Orhtodoxy, and refering their cause to the Holy Governing Synod.

Spring 1892 – Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov) the new successor to Bishop Vladimir made a pastoral visit to the Dyckesville/Fond du Lac parish.

http://books.google.com/books?id=zzxtXK3c1S0C&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=Wisconsin+bishop+Vladimir&source=bl&ots=oQ28bSuSJP&sig=LP0-UM529IEa91-brQAeIpdLlwQ&hl=en&ei=mDD0TOybFsbwngeEidmuCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Wisconsin%20bishop%20Vladimir&f=false
http://stcolumbamonastery.org/what-is-orthodox-christianity/a-brief-timeline-of-the-western-rite/
http://www.allmercifulsavior.com/Liturgy/Abramtsov.html

“As early as 1867, Greek cotton merchants established a church in New Orleans, but with three or four exceptions, the congregations have come into existence within the past fifteen years. The Chicago community erected its first church in 1898. At numerous points, Services are held in temporary quarters. Congregations, but no church buildings, are reported at Columbus and Toledo, C; Vandegrift, Pa.; Stamford and Bridgeport, Conn.; Dover and Somersworth, N. H.; Memphis, Tenn.; Biddeford, Me. At McGill, Nev., the Greeks own a small chapel, but have no resident priest. At Ely, in the same State, there was a flourishing Greek colony some years ago, but the number has diminished because the mining companies employ other laborers more extensively. The Greeks met many discouragements in maintaining Services. They secured a priest but he grew homesick and went back to Athens in less than three months. They now send to Salt Lake City for a clergyman when need arises.”
Neighbors: studies in immigration from the standpoint of the Episcopal church By Episcopal Church. Dept of missions and church extension.
http://books.google.com/books?id=EfYSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA52&dq=McGill+Nev.,+Greeks&hl=en&ei=y3EXTPfZJYuuMua9gJ4L&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=McGill%20Nev.%2C%20Greeks&f=false

It is also interesting in that it discusses the contemporary activities of Meletios and Alexander in the US, and Met. Germanos and Bishop Aftimos.

I did some searching, and it appears that the first Divine Liturgy celebrated in McGill took place on April 26, 1910. (See http://tiny.cc/QXrZw – the same source says that a large church was planned for central Ely, but was never constructed.)

Another source (http://tiny.cc/bkRb0) says that, in 1912, there were roughly 1600 Greeks living in White Pine County (which includes both Ely and McGill). However, that year, a strike led to the decline of the mining industry in the area, and most of the Greeks left. Another church, St. Alexios, was dedicated in Ely in 1930.

This is being done in Washington state in one of the oldest Orthodox churches in the lower 48 — Holy Trinity in Wilkeson, Washington, which is about 45 min from Tacoma. There is no longer any significant Orthodox presence in Wilkeson, but the local OCA parish in Tacoma, Wash., holds services in the historic Wilkeson church several times a year (including on their feast day on Pentecost). I believe that this chapel was consecrated by St. Tikhon as well and I think dates back to 1896 or so. It would be the oldest Orthodox parish in Washington state but I believe it was beat out by the Seattle parish by a couple of years.

-Gregg

On the website city-data.com (http://tiny.cc/7MOHa), they list a ROCOR parish in Pender County, NC (which includes St. Helena) in 2000. This parish is not listed in ROCOR’s parish directory, so it either has closed since 2000, or, as a semi-functioning parish, is not listed in the official directory.

The website historicwilmington.org had an article on the parish in 2007 (http://www.historicwilmington.org/documents/St%20Peter&Paul.pdf). This article says that there are just four (4) parishioners who meet on Sundays and listen to a recording of the Divine Liturgy. There hasn’t been a priest since 1998; it’s not clear whether that means that there hasn’t been a RESIDENT priest since then, or that there hasn’t even been a visiting priest. Anyway, this article is worth reading.

The 1916 Census of Religious Bodies lists no Russian parishes in North Carolina. I don’t have the full 1926 Census, but the 1936 Census does list one Russian church in the state (though it doesn’t give the city). This parish is listed as “rural,” and it had 67 members (35 men, 32 women). It would have been under the jurisdiction of the Metropolia (today’s OCA). However, as you indicated, no such parish is listed on the OCA website, and I couldn’t find it in the SCOBA parish directory (which includes ROCOR). There are no Moscow Patriarchal parishes in North Carolina, either.

I found a newspaper article (perhaps the same one you found), in the Wilmington Star-News, dated 3/9/1980. (To read it, visit this URL: http://tiny.cc/Ve316) The article says that the parish was founded in 1932, but lost a lot of parishioners after World War II, and was on the brink of closure in 1980. I suspect that only the building survives today.

Given the founding date (1932), it looks like this parish came along a decade after the Greek church in Asheville. Still, it is worth remembering. Thank you for calling it to my attention.

Also, in the 1916 Census of Religious Bodies, there is only one Greek church listed in Nevada. The Census doesn’t give the city, but this does suggest that the Ely parish is identical with the McGill parish which you mentioned.

Finally, would you be willing to send me a copy of Fr. George Sardounis’ history of the McGill church? I’d love to add it to my archives. My email address is mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you!

I cannot find this parish on any listing of any diocese. Does anyone know its status? Is it OCA? ROCOR? Moscow Patriarchate, or other?

Is it possible that this church could pre-date the Greek church in Asheville?

Thanks for this information. I wasn’t aware of the McGill church, and would love to learn more. However, I do know that there was a Greek church in Ely by at least 1911. I have a list of parishes from that year, and Ely is included. From what I have heard, that early Ely parish closed, for some reason. It’s possible that another opened later, unconnected to the first.

“St. Nicholas Church in Brookside, Alabama, was organized in 1894 by immigrants from Austro-Hungary who came to work in the Alabama coal fields. At that time, Brookside was a much larger town than at present, and the Slavs held a predominant position in local affairs. The first temple was destroyed by a tornado, the second church was leveled in 1912 by fire. In 1916 the present structure was built. Around 1926, many parishioners migrated to the Cleveland, Ohio, area because of the depletion of the coal resources, and the parish was greatly reduced in numbers.”

I also checked the lists of parishes again, and Brookside definitely does not appear on the 1906 list. My suspicion is still that the parish began as Uniate in 1894 and converted to Orthodoxy at some point between 1906 and 1911, but I can’t confirm that.