Tag: newspapers

The First Orthodox Liturgy in the American South

As we discussed earlier, Fr. Agapius Honcharenko celebrated the first Orthodox liturgy in New York City on March 2, 1865. At the time, he was the only Orthodox priest in America outside of Alaska. And as we've also discussed, there were Greeks and other Orthodox Christians living in New Orleans in...

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...

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....

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,...

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...

The First Black Orthodox Priest in America

On today's episode of the American Orthodox History podcast, we're running a lecture I gave at the Brotherhood of St Moses the Black conference in Indianapolis at the end of May. The subject is Fr Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America. The text of the lecture is below....

The Failed Mission of Fr Stephen Hatherly

From 1870 to 1883, Fr Nicholas Bjerring was pastor of a Russian Orthodox chapel in New York City. Bjerring was a convert from Roman Catholicism, and he basically operated an "embassy chapel." He held services for Russian and Greek officials stationed in America, he ministered to the few Orthodox Christians...

St Raphael’s Consecration

    St Raphael was consecrated Bishop of Brooklyn on March 13, 1904, by St Tikhon and Bishop Innocent of Alaska (not to be confused with the earlier St Innocent). What follows is a little article I wrote on the consecration. My plan is to include the article in a...

What a majestic and refulgent language is the Arabic!

St Raphael—then an archimandrite—arrived in New York City on November 14, 1895. He made quite a first impression, not only on his Syrian Orthodox flock, but on the New York media. On November 19, the following appeared in the New York Sun: It was a pleasure to listen to the strains...

July 4, 1892

Last month, I did a podcast on the attempt to form a pan-Orthodox parish in Chicago in 1888. (You can also read a post about it here.) That attempt failed, and in 1892, separate Greek and Russian parishes were founded in Chicago. The Greek church was founded in April, under the jurisdiction...