Tag: San Francisco

The Orthodox Baptism of a Civil War Veteran

Last week, we published the story of William Hoskins, an 89-year-old veteran of the American Civil War who traveled from Los Angeles to San Francisco in December 1900 to be baptized into the Orthodox faith by St Sebastian Dabovich. Shortly after this, Fr Kirill Sokolov, dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral...

US Civil War Veteran Baptized by St Sebastian Dabovich

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of Orthodox in America had not reached 50,000, but it already had several distinguished converts to the Orthodox Faith from Protestantism and Roman Catholicism: William Hoskins, an eighty-nine-year-old Civil War veteran who was a Baptist from Los Angeles, who traveled to...

What was the first Orthodox parish in America?

The question, "What was the first Orthodox parish in America?" is surprisingly difficult to answer. A big part of the problem comes from that word, "parish." What is a parish? When does a collection of Orthodox people become a "parish"? It's a matter of interpretation, and particularly in the early...

Photo of Unidentified San Francisco Priest

I was browsing in the wonderful photo collection at Alaska's Digital Archives the other day when I ran across the above photo, which was titled, "3/4 length seated portrait of unidentified priest." Who was he? The bottom of the photo gives us a clue, of course: the name "Weitz" (probably...

This week in American Orthodox history (March 12-18)

This week is a busy one: March 14, 1767: Philip Ludwell III, the first Orthodox convert in American history, died in London. Decades earlier, in 1738, Ludwell had joined the Orthodox Church in London. He was just 22 at the time, and was a rising star in the Virginia aristocracy....

This week in American Orthodox history (March 5-11)

March 10, 1866: The future Archbishop Arseny Chagovtsov was born in Kharkov, in what was then the Russian Empire and what is today Ukraine. A widowed priest, he became a monk and came to America in 1903 to serve in the Russian North American Mission. He was instrumental in the...

The Third Greek Church of San Francisco

Jim Lucas is the president of the Greek Historical Society of the San Francisco Bay Area, a non-profit corporation based at Annunciation Cathedral in San Francisco. The organization is dedicated to the preservation of Greek history and culture in the San Francisco area.  Jim has been actively researching the history...

From Harvard MD to Orthodox priest: the Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas story

    Editor's note: The following article was written by relatives of Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas, and originally appeared in the 60th anniversary commemorative album for Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco, published in 1996. The article has been reprinted at Annunciation Cathedral's website, and we present it here courtesy...

Fr. Sava Matanovich: the first Serbian Orthodox priest in America

Just a brief note today: I had always assumed that Fr. Sebastian Dabovich was the first Serbian Orthodox priest in America, but apparently he wasn't. The first Serbian priest in America -- and probably the first Serbian priest the California-born Dabovich had ever seen -- was Fr. Sava Matanovich. From...