Tag: New York

Isabel Hapgood: The death and funeral of St. Raphael

Editor's note: The following article was written by Isabel Hapgood and appeared in the New York Tribune on March 8, 1915. It is the most complete surviving description of the funeral of St. Raphael, who died on February 27, 1915. Hapgood herself had known St. Raphael for nearly two decades,...

Grand Duke Alexis in the New York chapel, Thanksgiving 1871

From the New York Times, December 1, 1871: Thanksgiving Day was observed by the Grand Duke Alexis yesterday in a very quiet manner. In the morning he went to the Greek Chapel at No. 951 Second-avenue, accompanied by Minister Catacazy, Admiral Poisset, the Secretary of Legation and Consul-General Bodisco. By...

US Orthodox memorials for Tsar Alexander III

Tsar Alexander III of Russia died on November 1, 1894. A week later (and 116 years ago today), on November 8, two memorial services for the Tsar were held in America. Both were of note, for various reasons. New York had no Russian church in 1894, so the Russian consul...

The Greeks in America, 1873

Editor's note: The following article appeared in the New York Times on August 4, 1873. That's nearly two decades before Greek immigrants began to flood into America. According to the book Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, only 217 immigrants came from Greece to the US in the...

Did St. Raphael try to shoot a police officer?

In my last article, I wrote about the "Battle of Pacific Street" -- the gunfight between Syrian Orthodox and Maronites in Brooklyn on the night of September 18, 1905. As I said before, St. Raphael Hawaweeny fled the scene and was chased (and then arrested) by a policeman, Officer Mallon. According...

St. Raphael and the Battle of Pacific Street

As we've seen over the past couple of weeks, in September 1905, New York's Syrian community was on the brink of war. On one side were the Orthodox, who rallied around their bishop, St. Raphael Hawaweeny. The saint himself opposed violence -- both violent acts and violent words -- but...

“New York’s 6,000 Syrians & Their Colony”

Editor's note: The following article appeared in multiple newspapers (including the New York Sun and the Washington Post) on July 30, 1905 -- just a couple of weeks before New York's Syrian community became embroiled in a very public, very messy war between Orthodox and Maronites. In light of that...

Agapius Honcharenko: answers to some questions

Recently, Nicholas Chapman published several newly-discovered documents relating to Agapius Honcharenko here at OH.org. A reader named Reg responded with this comment: This is getting confusing. Matthew since you wrote the original story on Honcharenko, could I ask you to post a timeline on Honcharenko: Date & place of birth...

The Eve of the Battle of Pacific Street

Last week, we left the two New York Syrian camps -- Orthodox and Maronite -- on the brink of war. Each side's partisan newspaper attacked the other, and the Maronites took particular aim at St. Raphael, the Orthodox bishop of Brooklyn, accusing him of all sorts of outlandish offenses. Various...

Trouble in Syrian New York

Way back in January, I began what I intended to be a series on the 1905 arrest and trial of St. Raphael Hawaweeny. I wrote only one article on the subject, though, and even that article was more of a collection of quotations from contemporary newspapers than an actual piece...