Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City

This week, I’ve been discussing the first Orthodox liturgy in New York City, celebrated by Fr. Agapius Honcharenko in 1865. (For those posts, click here and here.)

Honcharenko appears to have arrived in New York in January 1865. The following is part of the January 18, 1865 entry in the diary of Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City:

The Revd Mr. Young called in the evening to see me, on important business, connected with the arrival of a Russian priest in this city, who came out to minister to the Greek and Slavonic people here.  I promised him a room for their services in one of our buildings.  We had much conversation on the Russo-Greek movement wh[ich] is going on favourably to all appearance here & in England.

On March 2 of the same year, Honcharenko served the landmark Orthodox liturgy in Trinity Chapel. Here is Dix’s diary entry from that day:

This 2nd. day of Lent was a memorable one, because the Liturgy of the Eastern Church was sung in Trinity Chapel, at 11 A.M. This never occurred before so far as I have heard, in any Anglican Church. Bishop Potter was to have been there, but backed out, and went down to S. Paul’s instead, to the noon day communion. A full account of this delightful service, will be found at the end of this diary; I cut it out from the Evening Post.

Dix went on to note that the service “took just 1 hr. & 15 m.,” and he included multiple newspaper clippings which reported on the event.

I am indebted to Gwynedd Cannan, archivist of Trinity Church in New York, for providing the excerpts from the Dix diary.