Category: Online Sources

New document on life of Fr. Nicola Yanney

Fr. Nicola Yanney is one of my favorite priests in the history of Orthodoxy in America. He immigrated to America at age 19, in 1892-93, with his new wife. They immediately settled in, of all places, Nebraska. Nine years later, she gave birth to their fifth child -- and died...

A 5th century Greek church in Connecticut? Nope.

Recently, an article has been circulating among some Orthodox folks on the Internet on a purported Greek Orthodox church in Connecticut, dating to the 5th century. If the article is accurate, it's an absolute bombshell -- it claims that Orthodox monks from North Africa fled persecution in the late 400s...

Historical Studies of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad

One of our advisory board members, Deacon Andrei Psarev of Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY, operates the excellent church history website ROCORStudies.org. As the name suggests, the site is devoted to studying the history of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). Recently, we asked Deacon Andrei to...

The 1940 Census Release: American History Moves Up a Decade

For those of us historians who work in the early twentieth century, one of the major sources of our work (and indeed a lot of what we've done here at SOCHA) are public records.  We heavily depend on things like marriage and death certificates, government documents, voter registration lists, and,...

Photo of the week: St. John Kochurov preaching in Chicago

Starting up another potentially regular feature here at OrthodoxHistory.org... This photo, dated 1905, shows Fr. John Kochurov preaching from the pulpit in the newly-constructed Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Chicago. It's one of several great shots of Holy Trinity to be found in the Chicago Daily News photo collection,...

Nicholas Chapman’s new lecture on Philip Ludwell now available

Nicholas Chapman recently gave an hour-long talk on Philip Ludwell III, the first Orthodox convert in American history. The lecture is now available for purchase, and you've got two options: an MP3 download for $4.95, and a boxed CD for $9.95. The boxed CD includes a newly-discovered portrait of Ludwell...

Primary sources on St. Peter the Aleut

Given the recent discussion about St. Peter the Aleut, I thought it might be worthwhile to publish some of the primary sources we have for his story. As I explained on Monday, there are four main sources: The 1819 transcript from the deposition of Keglii Ivan, the only known eyewitness to St....

Fr. Oliver “reboots” the St. Peter discussion

Over on his blog, Fr. Oliver Herbel has decided to re-frame his presentation of the St. Peter the Aleut question. He's taken down both of his earlier articles on the subject and replaced them with a new one, which you can read by clicking here.

Fr. Oliver Herbel on St. Peter the Aleut

This morning on his Frontier Orthodoxy blog, Fr. Oliver Herbel offered a post with the provocative title, "St. Peter the Aleut Did Not Exist." Fr. Oliver says that he intentionally did not publish the article here at OH.org so as to spare us the inevitable debate; however, I do think it's...

Episcopal Assembly website now live

If you haven't seen it yet, you should visit the new website of our Episcopal Assembly: www.episcopalassembly.org. Among other things, the site includes official EA news and press releases, a list of all the active canonical Orthodox bishops in North and Central America, and a directory of Orthodox parishes in America...