Fr. Sebastian Dabovich oversaw the foundation of the first Orthodox place of worship in Portland, Oregon.

Orthodoxy has been in Portland, Oregon for well over a century, and its history is of particular interest to me, as my in-laws live in the city, and I have visited there many times. Today, we’re going to look at the beginnings of organized parish life in Portland.

According to Brigit Farley, there are records of some sort of Orthodox religious activity in Portland dating to at least 1881. That year, Fr. Vladimir Vechtomov, the rector of the San Francisco cathedral, visited Portland to bury a Russian woman. That said, organized church life didn’t begin until the 1890s. In November of 1892, 29-year-old Fr. Sebastian Dabovich baptized two Greek children, in what the Oregonian (11/7/1892) called “the first ceremony of the kind that ever took place in this city.” The service was held in the St. Charles Hotel, the first brick hotel in all of Portland. The paper went on,

The Greek colony in this city only comprises about 20 members, but they are very active in church matters. They are at present contemplating the building of a church on the East side, and have purchased half a block of land at Twentieth and East Morrison streets. The structure will cost $5000, of which $1000 has already been raised. The Russian government contributes about $400,000 annually to the support of the Greek church in North America, and part of this fund will be available for the construction of a church in Portland. The bishop, of San Francisco, will furnish the chancel, pictures and other fixtures for the church, and will be present at the laying of the cornerstone.

I’m not sure how many actual Orthodox Christians were in Portland. The article says that the city’s Greek colony had only 20 people, but there were surely Orthodox of other nationalities, and there were also Greeks in neighboring communities. In fact, I’ve found evidence that at least one member of the Dabovich family was living in Portland at the time. In any event, Fr. Sebastian was convinced that Portland was the right place for an Orthodox chapel.

In March of 1894, Bishop Nicholas Ziorov, accompanied by Dabovich and Fr. Alexander Pustynsky, paid a visit to Portland. It was his first stop in the city, but he actually wasn’t the first Orthodox bishop to set foot in Portland. In 1890, Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky had spent a night in Portland while en route from Alaska to San Francisco, but there’s no evidence that he interacted with the small Orthodox population of the city.

Anyway, Bp Nicholas made another visit in June, on his way to Seattle. Then, in July and August, Fr. Sebastian Dabovich spent three weeks in Portland, raising money for the chapel. Instrumental in this was an Alaskan Creole named Chernov, who was living in the city and apparently had some means. By August 15, construction had begun at East 20th and Morrison. The chapel’s name would be “Holy Trinity Greek Russian Mission.” Dabovich was telling the locals not just that it was an Orthodox chapel, but that it was a part of the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

With things going smoothly in Portland, Dabovich then left for Seattle, where he hoped to replicate his success. The pattern repeated itself the following spring: Dabovich visited Portland to dedicate the new chapel in March, and then traveled to Seattle to perform the same service. The two communities, Portland and Seattle, would be closely linked years to come. The Russian diocese never assigned a priest to the Portland chapel, so it operated as a sort of dependency of St. Spiridon Church in Seattle.

It’s often said that the current OCA parish in Portland, St. Nicholas, is identical with this original Holy Trinity chapel, which was founded in the 1890s. This isn’t really accurate… By the early 1900s, the original chapel had fallen into disrepair, and the Greeks organized their own parish in 1908. There wouldn’t be a Russian church in the city until 1927, when St. Nicholas Church was founded.

Tags: 1881, 1890, 1892, 1894, 1895, America, Greek, newspapers, Nicholas Ziorov, parishes, Portland, primary sources, Russian, Seattle, Sebastian Dabovich, Vladimir Sokolovsky, Vladimir Vechtomov

The 1890s witnessed the initial proliferation of Orthodox churches in the contiguous United States, and most of those early parishes are still with us today — both Greek churches in New York City, the Greek and Russian churches in Chicago, St. Alexis Toth’s parishes in Minneapolis and Wilkes-Barre. But one early effort didn’t make it to the 21st century; in fact, it didn’t even make it to the 20th. The first Orthodox church in Baltimore, Maryland — founded in 1893 — died in infancy. It’s a story that’s easily forgotten.

Today, Baltimore has a thriving Greek cathedral, Annunciation. It also happens to have perhaps the preeminent Orthodox parish historian in America, Nicholas Prevas. Prevas has written several books on the Greek Orthodox community in Baltimore; most recently, he authored the outstanding House of God… Gateway to Heaven. In that book, Prevas writes the following about the first church in Baltimore:

In Baltimore, the first meaningful attempt to fill the religious void came in or about 1895. The first Greek Orthodox place of worship was established at Bond and Gough Streets through the financial support of Christos Tsembelis (Sempeles) and his five brothers, George, Nicholas, Peter, Sarantos, and Theodore, who were prospering confectioners at 427 Colvin Street near the Belair Market. One of the brothers, George Sempeles, would later have the distinction of being elected the first parish council president.

This event was consistent with the fact that the Greek Orthodox Church in America originated from the actions of the immigrants themselves, and not by the directive of the church authorities in Athens or Constantinople — the latter being the world center of Orthodoxy. Living in a new land, religion played an important factor in uniting the Greek immigrants. A missionary priest, Reverend Theodoros Papaconstantinou, was brought to Baltimore to conduct services, and for the first time Greek Orthodox chanting was heard in the city. Unfortunately, the timing of the venture was not right. The small number of Greeks, unable to keep up with the expense of maintaining a house of worship, soon abandoned this attempt. It would be another decade before regular church services would be conducted in Baltimore.

This early Baltimore parish was actually organized in the latter part of 1893. On December 18, 1893, the Baltimore Sun reported that the community, named for St. John the Baptist, had been formed a few weeks earlier. After spending those initial weeks worshipping in a parishioner’s house, the community moved to an “improvised chapel” at 403 South Bond Street. The priest, according to the Sun, was “Rev. Constantinus Pappagorgu, of Athens.”

At the Divine Liturgy the day before, 51 people were present: 50 men and one woman. There were, said the paper, around 200 Greeks in the city. A week later, two children were baptized — the first documented Orthodox baptisms in Baltimore.

The Baltimore parish was only a year and a half younger than the Greek churches in New York and Chicago, but both of those communities took an interest in the goings-on in Baltimore. On January 6, 1894, the Sun reported that the Chicago Greek parish had promised to send $1,000 to Baltimore; for its part, the New York congregation would contribute $500.

The priest of St. John the Baptist church, listed in the papers as “Constantinus Pappagorgu,” appears to be listed on this Port of New York passenger manifest (3rd line from the top). From the manifest, we learn that Constantine Papageorgios, a clergyman from Greece, came to America on December 26, 1892. He was 45 years old, and his initial destination was New York. He didn’t bring a wife or children, which suggests that he might have been a monastic priest. I’m not sure what he did for most of 1893, but he appeared in Baltimore in the autumn of that year to start a Greek church. And I don’t know what happened to him after the parish closed; my best guess is that he returned to Greece.

St. John the Baptist church first appears in the newspapers in December 1893, and it’s gone after January 1894. A year later — January 14, 1895 — the following notice appeared in the Sun:

The Greek Catholics of Baltimore yesterday celebrated the beginning of their new year. There was no public celebration of the event as there is no Greek Catholic Church in Baltimore. About a year ago the Greek Catholic congregation on South Bond street, which was organized by John Mitchell, of 1630 Thames street, was disbanded for want of support.

Eleven years later, Evangelismos (Annunciation) Greek Orthodox Church was formed in Baltimore.

Tags: 1893, 1894, 1895, America, Baltimore, Greek, newspapers, Nicholas Prevas, parishes, primary sources

Judson Memorial Baptist Church was newly built when the the second Greek Orthodox parish in New York City, Annunciation, began to rent the basement.

The first Greek Orthodox church in New York City – named for the Holy Trinity — was formed in January of 1892. It was organized by a group called the Society of Athena, which, as the name suggests, was composed mainly of Greek immigrants from Athens. The community’s first priest, Fr. Paisios Ferentinos, was sent by the Archbishop of Athens, apparently in consultation with the Ecumenical Patriarch.

By the end of 1893, though, many of the Holy Trinity parishioners wanted to start a second church. The reasons are not entirely clear. The New York Times (January 8, 1894) reported at the time that Holy Trinity was “attended chiefly by the up-town colony of Greeks, and did not fully meet the wants of those who live at the lower end of the city.” The president of the Society of Athena, Solon Vlasto, made direct contact with the Ecumenical Patriarch. In response, the Patriarch sent Archimandrite Kallinikos Delveis to New York, authorizing him to found Annunciation, the city’s second Greek Orthodox church.

Now, it’s not entirely clear why exactly the Society of Athena made this request. There were, by most accounts, something like a thousand Greeks in New York City at the time, and the newly-formed Annunciation parish claimed 300 or 400 members. In his book Orthodox Christians in America, Fr. John Erickson writes that a “dissatisfied group wrote to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, rather than to the Holy Synod of Greece, asking for ‘an educated priest.’” But, as I’ve noted in an earlier post, the priest of Holy Trinity, Fr. Paisios Ferentinos, was in fact quite well-educated. There must have been some sort of dispute, but at the moment, I don’t know the details.

The Times described the new priest, Fr. Kallinikos, in this way:

The Rev. Kalinikos Dilveis is a man of striking personality. He is thirty-two years old, of medium height, olive complexion, and long black hair and beard. He was born in Constantinople, and was educated in the theological seminary of Halki, in that city. His voice is resonant, and he is reputed to be a preacher of great eloquence.

The new parish had a little trouble in finding a building, but eventually made arrangements to rent space in the basement of Judson Memorial Baptist Church, located in Washington Square. And as things worked out, the first church service was the Divine Liturgy on Christmas Day.

Later that year, when Tsar Alexander III died, both Greek churches in New York held memorials for the Emperor. The older church, Holy Trinity, drew some 300 people to its memorial, including the Russian consul. Annunciation’s service had around a hundred people in attendance. Holy Trinity clearly remained the “main” Greek church in the city, and it seems likely that most of the Russians in New York attended Holy Trinity, rather than Annunciation.

Tags: 1893, 1894, Greek, Kallinikos Delveis, New York, newspapers, Paisios Ferentinos, parishes, primary sources, Russian, Solon Vlasto