“A bell hangs in the belfry of the church. Another bell, weighing 100 pounds and dated to 1796, bears inscriptions for both Mission San Fernando and a Russian Orthodox Church official of the island of Kodiak, Alaska. It is believed by some that the bell originated with Nikolay Petrovich Rezanov’s 1806 Russian trading expedition to Alta California.”

http://www.missionscalifornia.com/keyfacts/san-fernando-rey.html

My friend Eric Peterson owns a copy of Richard Pierce’s biographical encyclopedia of Russian America (I’ve ordered it through my university library), and he tells me that Pierce makes reference to this contact between Russia and Spain over the St. Peter allegations. It’s great to see another reference to this communication. We really, really need to get copies of whatever documents might survive in the Spanish archives.

I couldn’t find Keglii Ivan (or any variation of his name) on that list of persons stationed at Fort Ross; however, the list appears to begin in 1820, and Keglii Ivan (and Peter) probably would have been there earlier, in 1814-15.

“A hundred-pound bell was unearthed in an orange grove near the Mission in 1920. It carried the following inscription (translated from Russian): “In the Year 1796, in the month of January, this bell was cast on the Island of Kodiak by the blessing of Archimandrite Joaseph, during the sojourn of Alexsandr Baranov.” It is not known how this Russian Orthodox artifact from Kodiak, Alaska made its way to a Catholic mission in Southern California. ”
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Mission_San_Fernando_Rey_de_Espa%C3%B1a#Mission_bells

I’m not sure if Ivan Keglii/Kykhklai shows up here, a list of everyone recorded as stationed at Fort Ross
http://www.fortrossinterpretive.org/TEXT/DEATH%20IN%20THE%20DAILY%20LIFE%20OF%20THE%20ROSS%20COLONY.pdf

As for the times, it has to be remembered that Spain was fighitig the Napolean Wars, Mexico was fighting for its independence, and California was awaiting its new governor (it’s last from Spain). The three remaining Jesuits in Mexico were getting ready to revive their Ortder restored in 1814, at a time when they had outworn their welcome in Russia by prosellytizing the Orthodox (the Jesuits were expelled from St. Petersburg in 1815, and expelled from the empire in 1820). It was not ordinairy times, no matter what the ordinairy treatment of the Spanish of captured Aleust, which seem to have been fairly common:”Such a case was reported by Fedor Lutke on a visit to Bodega Bay, while circumnavigating the globe on the Russian sloop Kamchatka in 1818. The man who interpreted for the Indians and the visiting Russians was an Aleut. He “had run off when Kuskov first went to the Port of San Francisco. [The Aleut] had lived with the Indians for nearly a year, but when the next group came to hunt, he reappeared and began hunting sea otters with the others.”
“Interpretation of Culture Contact at Colony” Ross Daniel F. Murley
http://www.scahome.org/publications/proceedings/Proceedings.18Murley.pdf
The imperial foreign ministry’s archives had the following:”Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Pozzo di Borgo [a leading Corsican an rival of Napoleon and Joseph [I of Spain and the Indies 1808–1813] Bonaparte, in 1821 Russian ambassador to Paris] 1821, July23. No. 4254. Russian American Company has brought serious charges against the Spanish missions in California because of their cruelty to the natives.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=UZjfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA103&dq=Borgo++California+cruelty+natives&hl=en&ei=WGJLTcf3GcWdgQfMh6TYDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Borgo%20%20California%20cruelty%20natives&f=false
The Czar had given the natives rights under the 1820 Charter.

I seem to remember a lot of coveting of Southern CA by those involved in the Russian-American Company, in particular Santa Barbara being mentioned. The governor of Irkutsk had instructed that sovereignty medals be buried along the CA coast.

1. They are to be commemorated (rather than canonized) because “their names were listed in the service to St. Herman of Alaska as holy martyrs”, meaning “a new decision on their canonization is not required.”

2. It says that “In as much as the martyrdom of Peter the Aleut and Hieromonk Juvenalius is not in doubt…” meaning that if doubt is raised about their martyrdoms, the Resolution may no longer be to no effect, legalistically speaking.

I wonder if that 1957 dissertation provides any insight into whether there was a pre-1970 awareness or veneration of St. Peter, or whether it simply translates and quotes the same three primary documents already available. It’s possible this dissertation is the source that brought these documents to the attention of The Orthodox Word, St. John Maximovitch or others. Heck, maybe that dissertation has a translation or excerpt from the 1819 transcript from the deposition of Keglii Ivan!

I wonder if it’s possible that Peter was accidentally named for the place he was martyred (San Pedro). This could easily have happened if you are a Russian and don’t recognize (and can’t pronounce) his native name but recognize the ‘of San Pedro’ or “Pedroskii”. Such things aren’t unheard of in Orthodoxy and Russian. I think St. Petersburg is simply referred to as “Peter” (see Figes, Natasha’s Dance), and there is a tradition of ‘renaming’ a saint after his location, e.g., St. Damascene.

Matthew has written that, “As far as I know, the earliest source to mention that name [Peter] is Yanovsky’s 1865 letter. The two 1820 documents don’t include it, and the only name we have prior to 1865 is his native name. Interestingly, I read somewhere that, in Alaska, they have hymns to Peter in his native language, and they use his Alaskan name (and not Peter).” Not sure how we’d confirm it, but it makes a lot of sense.

http://startingontheroyalpath.blogspot.com/2010/04/st-peter-aleut.html

According to the OCA website, Kovach is a retired priest attached to Christ the Saviour Church in Harrisburg, PA. See:

http://www.oca.org/DIRlisting.asp?SID=9&KEY=OCA-EP-HFDCSC

UPDATE: The dissertation was written in 1957, and is entitled, “The Russian Orthodox Church in Russian America.” Here’s a link to the appropriate page on the University of Pittsburgh library website. Not sure if they’ll lend it via ILL, but it’d be worth a try.

http://pittcatplus.pitt.edu/?itemid=|library/marc/voyager|1009675

“There is a wealth of correspondence on the subject of the treatment and return of the Russian and Aleutian prisoners taken in 1814 and 1815. Such letters may be found in the following. The expediente cited above. Documentos para la Historia de Mexico, MS, Biblioteca Nacional, Mexico, IV, No. 8. Provincial State Papers, XIX, XX. Guerra y Noriega, Jose de la, Documentos para la Historia de California, MS, Bancroft Library, II, III.”

At the very least, it shouldn’t be too hard to contact the Bancroft Library in California and see what they have.

Orrologion may be on the right track here. I definitely think we need the help of the Spanish sources for the geography. We really need to get ahold of them. Ogden has a nice footnore, from what I remember, in which she (!) says where to go for all the various sources. It will take a while to gather them all–time and money is something I know I’m short on.

I’m still trying to piece together the geography, but the Spanish sources seem likely to resolve the confusion in the Russian sources.

San Pedro was a port that was under the jurisdiction of the San Gabriel Mission. Since San Pedro was later annexed by Los Angeles, one can assume a writer in 1933 might simply reference the then contemporary name of the area in question (Los Angeles, of which San Pedro is basically a neighborhood).

This is seen in NYC, too, where Brooklyn was an independent city of its own until its consolidation with New York City in 1898 and is variously referred to as New York, NY or Brooklyn, NY; New York City is another example itself as the City was originally only at the southernmost tip of Manhattan island with other towns and villages (e.g., Greenwich Village) scattered across the island (some of which were destroyed in the creation of Central Park). In fact, areas within both New York City and the City of Los Angeles have postal addresses of the old cities/towns/villages/neighborhoods since annexed by the larger entity (e.g., Sherman Oaks, Astoria).

http://frontierorthodoxy.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/rebooted-why-i-currently-do-not-accept-the-martyrdom-account-for-peter-the-aleut/

Orrologion,
The geography is a little hazy, but Tarasov’s hunting party was not down by LA in 1815 (though I believe he and his fellow captives did go south–but not to the LA area as I recall–for their period of forced labor). The Tarasov party seems to have been captured at the port San Pedro and taken initially to the San Gabriel Mission and then later to Santa Barbara (at which point the Fr. Jose letter enters the discussion).

1815

Torrential rains flood out El Pueblo, forcing it to relocate to higher ground. The Los Angeles River changes its outlet to the sea from San Pedro to the Ballona wetlands. A Russian trader, Boris Tarakanaf, is the first foreigner jailed in El Pueblo. José Antonio Rocha, born in Portugal, becomes the first foreigner to settle in El Pueblo.

1825

The Los Angeles River changes its outlet back from the Ballona wetlands to San Pedro.

http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi01b.htm

1909

Wilmington and San Pedro are annexed by the City of Los Angeles.

http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi01e.htm

BTW, locally in Los Angeles, San Pedro is pronounced “San PEE-droh” not “San PAY-droh”.

“The first official documentation of the harbor was by Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. On October 8, 1542, Cabrillo came across a marshland and natural harbor at the northwest end of San Pedro Bay and named the area Bahia de Los Fumas or “Bay of Smokes” after the smoke that rose from the nearby hillside of Native American hunters. This fairly desolate area remained largely intact until 1769, when Spanish officials and missionaries set their sights on colonizing the U.S. West Coast. This led to the first commercial ventures in San Pedro in the mid-1800s. The rest, as they say, is history.

The harbor in San Pedro was used as a trading post by Spanish missionary monks from Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. The monks met ships at the water’s edge with provisions from Spain. The first American trading ship to call at San Pedro was the Lelia Bryd, in 1805. At that time, it was illegal to conduct business with any other country but Spain. Because of the distance and loose regulations, however, trade with other countries thrived. In 1822 an independent Mexican government lifted the Spanish restrictions on trade. That led to a surge of settlement and commercial ventures in San Pedro. By the time California joined in the Union, in 1848, business in San Pedro harbor was flourishing.”

Source: http://www.portoflosangeles.org/idx_history.asp