The Carpatho-Rusyn Society Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter's first Rusyn Genealogy Conference was held Saturday, June 22, 2013 at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Speakers were the following:
- John Righetti (Sewickley, PA), “Who are the Rusyns? Early History to the Last Tumultuous 150 Years”
- Tom Peters (Somerville, NJ), “From No Man’s Land to the Promised Land: The Carpatho-Rusyn Experience”
- Rich Custer (Washington, DC), “Northeastern Pennsylvania: The Keystone of Carpatho-Rusyn American History”
- Michele Parvensky (Nazareth, PA) “Research Your Rusyn Ancestry in Eastern and Western PA, Slovakia and Transcarpathia”
- George Napuda (Pennsville, NJ) “One Man’s Personal Research Journey”
My presentation was primarily visual, numbering over 180 slides used to tell the story of the early development of Carpatho-Rusyn community institutions in northeastern Pennsylvania. Here I present a synopsis of the presentation, and of necessity only a selection of the slides, briefly annotated for the online viewer's aid in following the presentation without my original verbal explanation.
Northeastern Pennsylvania: The Keystone of Carpatho-Rusyn American History
Northeastern Pennsylvania was the site of most of the oldest Rusyn immigrant settlements in the U.S., and as such, it was also the site of most of the Rusyn “firsts:” the first churches, choirs, bands, schools, cemeteries, newspapers, fraternal organizations, and some of the first Rusyn immigrant-owned businesses. The presentation traced the geographic expansion of the number of organized immigrant Rusyn communities in the first 20 years. It included a slideshow of dozens of rarely-seen photographs and advertisements giving a glimpse at early Rusyn immigrant life and community leaders in northeastern Pennsylvania.
