Search Results for: peter the aleut

Unsolved mysteries of American Orthodoxy

Yesterday, I published a brief article on Fr. Stephen Andreades, the first resident priest of the first Orthodox parish in the contiguous United States -- Holy Trinity in New Orleans. The entire early history of that parish is something of a mystery. We know who the early priests were --...

SOCHA Newsletter, Issue #3 (October 27, 2011)

The directors of SOCHA: Fr. Oliver Herbel, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, Matthew Namee, and Aram SarkisianI haven't put together a SOCHA newsletter in a while, and this one is kind of sparse, but I didn't want to wait any longer. If you know of anything we should include in the...

Iakov Babin & the Il’mena Island Massacre of 1815

Yesterday, we posted the St. Peter the Aleut entry from Richard A. Pierce's Russian America: A Biographical Dictionary. In that excerpt, Pierce offered this theory: "Since the extermination of Indians on 'Il’mena Island' by Aleut hunters led by the Russian Iakov Babin, there with the RAC brig Il’mena, occurred at...

18th century Russian bell in California

Yesterday, Isa Almisry made a great comment full of fascinating links and references. One of the most intriguing is this one, on a Russian bell housed at the Mission of San Fernando el Rey de Espana, located 40 miles from San Pedro (where St. Peter the Aleut was reportedly captured):...

The Myth of Unity

Nine years ago, at a conference at St. Vladimir's Seminary, I presented a paper called, "The Myth of Unity and the Origins of Jurisdictional Pluralism in American Orthodoxy." My thesis, basically, was that, contrary to the prevailing narrative at the time, Orthodoxy in America was not administratively united prior to...

Orthodoxy in America – an Interconnected and Shared History

Presentation given by Nicholas Chapman of Herkimer NY at the OCL 25th Anniversary Conference, Washington DC on Oct 27, 2012. (Original here) Before I begin let me thank George Matsoukas and the Board of OCL for the invitation to present today. I would also like to acknowledge Matthew Namee whose place...

This week in American Orthodox history (May 21-27)

May 21, 1851: Michael Ziorov -- the future Bishop Nicholas, head of the Russian Mission in North America -- was born in the District of Kherson, in what was then the Russian Empire and what is today Ukraine. As a layman, he served as Inspector for two seminaries. At 36,...

This week in American Orthodox history (April 30-May 6)

May 4, 1793: Empress Catherine the Great of Russia granted the Holy Synod permission to establish an Orthodox mission in "Russian America" (Alaska). The following year, the first eight missionaries, including St. Herman, arrived on Kodiak Island. May 3, 1870: Nicholas Bjerring, a convert from Roman Catholicism, was received into...

A Connecticut Yankee in the Tsarina’s Domain

It may come as a surprise to learn that one of the earliest descriptions of Orthodox worship in Alaska comes not from the pen of a Russian missionary or fur trader, but from that of a young Anglo-American explorer who visited the “Great Land” in 1778, sixteen years before the...