The 2019 Memorial Day Weekend Research Trip (The Last One?)

Another Memorial Day Weekend has come and gone, and as has become my custom, I extended it a few days and made a research trip out of it. Again as per custom, I began in central PA and wound up in northeastern PA for a few days, also attending the Memorial Day Pilgrimage at St. Tikhon’s Monastery. With a conveniently located motel in Dunmore as my base, my activities were mostly in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area, followed by a few visits around Pottsville to close out the trip.

But back to the beginning. Heading north to PA from DC typically leads me to Somerset, Cambria, Indiana, and Huntingdon Counties. I began this trip with a stop in Wood (once upon a time known as Woodvale) in Huntingdon County. I wanted to take some new and hopefully better photos of the inside of the vintage St. Michael's Orthodox Church, and parishioner Susan Pawuk graciously met me there and opened the church.

She also provided me with the parish's 2017 centennial booklet, which had some valuable photos inside. Susan's brother Ronald has been a Facebook friend for a while, so I was glad to make a personal connection with the family, who are now among only a few local parishioners of St. Michael's.

I then headed to Patton, Cambria County, near my mother's homestead in Barnesboro (now known as Northern Cambria), to meet with the current pastor of Patton's Ss. Peter & Paul Byzantine Catholic Church and our family parish, St. John's Byzantine Catholic Church in Northern Cambria. Father Vasyl Polyak is a Carpatho-Rusyn native of Užhorod and came to the U.S. to serve our churches several years ago.

Again taking "improved" photos of the inside of the Patton church, Fr. Vasyl also supplied me with a DVD to commemorate the parish's history, and later emailed me a digital copy of the historic old photo of the parish and its congregation, which was taken from a newspaper.

The hamlet of Dixonville in northern Indiana County was my next stop; parishioner Maureen (Betsa) Cornman, while unavailable to meet me there in person, graciously arranged for the church to be open, for a copy of the parish's 1915 centennial booklet to be set out for me, and for a bounty of historical photographs available for me to scan. It was encouraging to see a parish that's in a fairly out-of-the-way place still active and clearly proud of who they are. (Although most of its history has been as a Ukrainian Orthodox church, it was originally a Greek Catholic church tied to the mainly-Subcarpathian Rusyn St. Michael's Church in neighboring Clymer, and was actually a parish of the Pittsburgh Greek Catholic Exarchate until the mid-1920s. Most of its families, though, came from transitional Lemko-Bojko villages of Lisko County in southeastern Poland—within Carpathian Rus' but whose American descendants and those who remained in the homeland mostly came to consider themselves Ukrainians.) As part of the "circle of life," it was Maureen's parents George and Ann Betsa whose home at the base of the hill where the church now stands and whose porch I sat on and with whom I first discussed the history of St. John's parish way back in the 1990s when just beginning this project. George and Ann have gone on to eternal life, but their legacy lives on in a wonderful way.

Although this area is in many ways "home"—where my mother was born and raised, where I have my earliest memories of spending time with my baba, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and where some of my relatives still reside—I regrettably couldn't spend more time there on this trip. I did, however, visit the well-kept (by my cousin who lives nearby, I suspect) graves of my grandparents, aunts, and uncles in St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery in Northern Cambria, singing "Christos voskrese" (Christ is Risen) and sticking blessed pussywillows into the ground in front of their tombstones.

My final goal for the day was to make it to vespers in Madera, Clearfield County, but with stops in Janesville (aka Smithmill) and Ramey on the way, just in case someone, perhaps even the church pastors, might be at the churches so I could reestablish contacts in those places years after my original visits and research. Alas, that was not to be this time, but I did get a nifty pic or two of St. Vladimir's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Janesville.

My next and last destination was Madera, where I hoped to take improved photos of the interior of St. Mary's Russian Orthodox Church during or after their Saturday vespers service, and perhaps find some photos from the community's history—or someone who knew of someone who might have such photos.

I attended vespers and got the interior photos I wanted, and was reminded that wow, this is so much like the village churches of Carpathian Rus' where (as I have started saying) "every village's church is a cathedral." While I didn't meet anyone who had old photos to offer, in the parish hall was a valuable list (in Rusyn) of donors for the building of the church in 1913 (after its 1909 founding). The photo tucked into the corner of that framed list resembled the old postcard I also have of the church shortly after it was built, with a steep staircase exposed to the elements, unlike today, where an enclosure protects the still-steep stairs.


State College, the location of my alma mater PSU and close to my first home after birth, was a convenient stopping place for dinner, and then I made the final two hour trip to Hershey to my mother's home. The next day I would head upstate. I got a later start than expected, and the sunlight was favorable, so I changed my plans for that day and went to the very interesting Rusyn (or Russian or Ukrainian, as they are called) cemeteries in Mount Carmel and Shamokin, Northumberland County, to try to get some clearer pix of some incredibly difficult-to-photograph tombstones. I was mostly successful. This busy image of Shamokin's Transfiguration of Our Lord Ukrainian/Greek Catholic Cemetery may explain why it is one of the most interesting and one of my favorites of all Rusyn cemeteries in the United States.

I got to my hotel in Dunmore and immediately went to have a dinner at a reliable Italian restaurant. Afterward I turned my attention to organizing my schedule and tentative contacts for the next few days. Monday morning I made the half-hour trip to St Tikhon's Monastery in South Canaan for the annual pilgrimage. It was a lovely day but the attendance was rather low. I did acquire a handful of new old books from the St. Tikhon's Seminary Library table. Just a buck a book! Some of my haul: "The Teaching of Christ" in Rusyn language published in Užhorod in 1910, and the old pew book of the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, with their musical settings of the Subcarpathian Rusyn prostopinije liturgical chant.

My myriad attempts at making appointments for the next two days were coming up short and so I returned to St. Tikhon's to spend a few hours photographing more awesome content from their bound early issues of the Russian Brotherhood Organization's Pravda newspaper, for example:

And librarian Father Michael (Juk) had a bag full of books for me that my friend Maryann Bacsik had dropped off with him the day before the pilgrimage when she was passing through the area—lots of awesome old Lemko/Rusyn almanacs, such as these:

I traveled from there to Simpson for an appointment with a most interesting gentleman, John Revak, who formerly operated a local museum out of his home. Unfortunately he decided to close it and significantly downsize, and it turned out that I've bought some of his items on eBay over the last few years. I visited him in person to buy a large item that was too big to ship: the elusive "Otče Naš" (Our Father) painting by Father Anthony Kubek of Mahanoy City. I'd wanted one of these for years, and despite them having been found in many a parish hall and Rusyn home, I never had the chance to obtain one. So I jumped at the chance to have it.

John also had several other items of interest, both for sale and in his personal collection, being descended from both Lemko Rusyn and Ukrainian immigrant parents and growing up in Ss. Peter & Paul Greek Catholic Church of Simpson, where now he is the cantor. I look forward to photographs and other memorabilia from Simpson's Rusyn/Lemko community that he will hopefully be able to share, such as this photo which seems to be an early group pic of the St. Michael Brotherhood of the Ruskij Narodnŷj Sojuz / Russian National Union (which later became the Ukrainian National Association).

At the start, this lodge had many Lemko members, but eventually most of them joined Russophile or Rusynophile fraternals like RBO and GCU, and the small number of local Galician Ukrainians then made up most of the membership of the St. Michael Brotherhood. John also had a minute book of that lodge, written in Ukrainian, which he allowed me to photograph. I haven't read through it yet, and for the time period it covers (1930s-50s) it may not be super-interesting, but we shall see.


My last activity of Labor Day would be an early evening visit to Swoyersville, Lackawanna County (the west side of greater Wilkes-Barre) where I finally met in person a longtime Facebook friend, Natalie Asikainen, who has become a seasoned Carpatho-Rusyn (especially Lemko) genealogist who is fiercely devoted to her roots and was eagerly anticipating her first homeland visit in just a few weeks. She recently moved to the area and is always interested in seeing various historic Rusyn sites, so she came along as I was able to cross off some of the final cemeteries on my list to photodocument: St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic and the nearby Holy Trinity Slovak Roman Catholic, which predated St. Nicholas Cemetery by several years and as such has a number of Rusyn immigrant graves (some of which are marked with the distinctive 3-bar cross).

St. Nicholas Byzantine/Greek Catholic Church Cemetery, Swoyersville

Holy Trinity Slovak RC Church Cemetery, Swoyersville

The next morning was spent dodging rain and trying unsuccessfully to reach some key church contacts in Scranton, Taylor, and Olyphant. Despite having emailed all three several days in advance, and calling and leaving messages that morning, I never heard back from any of them. And so I eventually came to the time of my appointment at St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Church of Old Forge, where I wanted to take some fresh photos of the interior, especially the wall murals of Carpatho-Rusyn saints, St. Alexis (Toth) of Wilkes-Barre and St. Maksym (Sandowicz) of Gorlice (in Lemkovyna, southeastern Poland).

These murals were added some years after I first visited the church back in 1991 or thereabouts.

Icon mural of St. Maksym (Sandowicz) of Gorlice, Lemko Rusyn priest-martyr

The pastor, Fr. Peter Henry, was very gracious. He had even run an item in the parish bulletin when I first contacted him last year to see if anyone still had vintage photos from the parish that had once appeared in an anniversary book. (Shockingly, there were none offered, suggesting that they have been discarded, although that probably isn't actually the case.) After a pleasant discussion about his participation in the rather unique Orthodox/Eastern Catholic clergy association of the Scranton area, and the state of Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox parishes as I have encountered them in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, I bade him farewell.

Afterwards I took some time to enjoy delicious Old Forge-style pizza at Arcaro & Genell's Restaurant. I will definitely go back there when I am in the area!

I capped the afternoon visiting with the genuinely lovely and always-hospitable Father John and Matushka Alexandra Sorochka in Mayfield and taking some fresh photos of the exquisite and historic St. John's Russian Orthodox Cathedral.

The iconostasis, brought from the older church, is one of the most pristine examples of traditional Carpatho-Rusyn church art in the U.S. (and certainly one of my favorites).

I headed back south to Hershey for a final night at Mom's, feeling good about what I had completed, but also discouraged by the lack of response to numerous emails and phone messages in a few cases. Do I have enough information to proceed without these particular contacts ever cooperating? Certainly. Would it still be worth my while to pursue them? I believe so, but not for much longer. The perfect has been the enemy of the good for long enough with respect to this project, if it is ever to become the book it was meant to be.

En route, I narrowly escaped the approach of severe weather in the Wilkes-Barre area. I made my way to Schuylkill County to begin a wonderful evening in Minersville doing oral history interviews of two luminaries of the local Carpatho-Rusyn community: Paul Lohin (a cantor at Ss. Peter & Paul Byzantine Catholic Church) and Dr. Peter Yasenchak (cantor at St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Churches in Saint Clair and Brockton), both of whom were also members of the Original Byzantine Male Chorus of Pennsylvania. It was made more exciting by several tornado warnings issued in the area throughout the evening. Paul and his wife Jeannette were my hosts for the gathering.

Pete, now in his 90s and energetic as ever, told me of growing up in Larksville, Luzerne County, and later in Kingston, where he and his immigrant Rusyn parents (father from Osturnja, Spiš County, mother from Slovinky, Spiš County) were active members of St. Mary's Greek Catholic Church (and Pete was an altar boy). Paul talked about growing up in a Rusyn immigrant family (both parents from Chudl'ovo, Už County) in Heckscherville, Schuylkill County, and among the immigrant Rusyn community at his church in Minersville.

Paul pulled out some vintage items from Ss. Peter & Paul Church such as these parishioner donation books. It was somewhat disappointing that each person/family's address was not included.

Paul and Jeannette's dining room features this awesome painting of the original St. George Greek Catholic Church on Kear's Hill in Minersville, mother church to four other parishes of Carpatho-Rusyn origin in the town. St. George's was eventually torn down and its direct "successor" today is St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church.

My last activity was capturing images of a few dozen additional naturalization documents of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants, kept at the Schuylkill County Courthouse in Pottsville.

Imre Holics was a Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant living in Jonestown, outside of Minersville, who was born in the village of Dravci, Už County (aka Darócz or Ungdaróc, Ung County). On this Declaration of Intention he put "Russian" on the line for race, while on his Petition for Citizenship, he indicated his race as "Russniak"...

Between xerox copies and photographs, I probably now have close to 300 of these docs for Schuylkill County, which are not (yet) online. They probably merit a study in and of themselves, but a lot of the things I've observed on them will make for interesting additional information for the Schuylkill chapters of my book. (Likewise for the hundreds of other such docs I've collected in other county courthouses and online!)

The trip was certainly worth the time and effort, despite some disappointments (and reality checks). However, my intention is for this to have been the last time I will need to do such a trip over a Memorial Day weekend. By next year’s holiday I should be exclusively writing the book and processing images, and not trying to find/collect any more, given that I already have far more to work with than I could possibly include in the book.

Original material is © by the author, Richard D. Custer; all rights reserved.