Confederate Orthodox soldiers in the Civil War

In 1861, the Greeks living in New Orleans organized their own volunteer militia regiment to fight on the Confederate side in the Civil War. From Fr. Alexander Doumouras, in the 1975 book Orthodox America: 1794-1976: Government records show an unofficial memorandum mentioning "Greek Company A," Louisiana Militia, 1861. The company...

More on New York’s first liturgy

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...

Turtledoves Prohibited, Wedding Was Postponed

I've been trekking through the 1860s lately, but I thought I'd take a break from that for a moment and present something completely random. From the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 1913: TURTLEDOVES PROHIBITED, WEDDING WAS POSTPONED Syrian Father’s Poetic Fancy Cost Him a Fine Also LA CROSSE, Wis., July 26....

Trinity Chapel: A Correction

A couple days ago, I wrote a piece on the first Orthodox liturgy in New York City, celebrated by Fr Agapius Honcharenko in 1865. The site of the liturgy was Trinity Chapel, which belonged to the Episcopal Church. In my post, I included a photo of Trinity Church... Which, as...

The First Orthodox Liturgy in New York City

On March 2, 1865, New York City witnessed its first-ever Orthodox liturgy. The service was held in Trinity Chapel, which belonged to the Episcopal Church. The priest, Fr Agapius Honcharenko, was originally from what is now Ukraine and what was then a part of the Russian Empire. But he came,...

Parish Histories

Yesterday, we announced the addition of some new pages on the SOCHA website, including a Resources page. In the past day, we've added links to dozens and dozens of web pages that deal with various aspects of American Orthodox history. There's actually a huge quantity of material out there on...

“This Syrian Bishop derives his authority from… Antioch”

Matthew has previously provided for us some tidbits on the ambiguous canonical status of St. Raphael of Brooklyn (Antioch? Moscow? Both? How?)—see especially his post on St. Raphael's consecration as well as listening to the relevant parts in his "The Myth of Past Unity" lecture. Here's another data point that...

Three Additions

We've made three major additions to the OrthodoxHistory.org website in the past few days that you might like to take a look at: Administration (just what it says: listing our Advisory and Executive Boards), Terms of Use (standard for many websites; please read and abide by them), and Resources (all...

The Myth of Past Unity: some clarifications

On today's episode of my American Orthodox History podcast, we're airing my talk, "The Myth of Past Unity," given at the St Vladimir's Seminary conference in June. For video of that lecture, click here. I wrote an "author's note" to go at the end of my paper. I didn't have...

Two Russian Priests in New York City, 1863

In September of 1863, in the middle of the American Civil War, a fleet of Russian ships arrived in the New York harbor. Their mission was both diplomatic and strategic, but anyway, that’s not terribly relevant here.[i] More to the point, among the crews of the ships were at least...