Tag: primary sources
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Honcharenko in San Francisco
From the Congregationalist and Boston Recorder, January 16, 1868: Many will remember that, some two years ago, a famous service was held in Trinity Chapel, New York city, in which, with a great flourish of trumpets, one “Father Agapius,” who purported to be a Priest of the Greek church, celebrated “the Sacrifice of the Mass”…
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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 the 1860s. In fact, they…
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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 included a captain, three lieutenants,…
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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 diary of Rev. Dr. Morgan…
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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. – Turtledoves would be just…
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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, apparently, from the Church of…
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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 the opportunity to read that…
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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 two Orthodox priests serving as…
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“When we speak of Tsarist pressure”
In the late 1920s, after Abp. Aftimios Ofiesh (the successor to St. Raphael in the see of Brooklyn and the subject of my M.Div. thesis and possible future book) had in 1927 established, with the blessing of the Russian Metropolia, the so-called “American Orthodox Catholic Church,” he engaged in something of a debate via correspondence…