Year 2022 in Review

The adage “time flies” gets more and more evident with each passing year. It’s already been more than a year since I last updated this blog. Which isn’t to say that year has been uneventful. I directed much of my online energy to posting to my Facebook and Instagram pages – I hope you’re also following those. If you are, some of what follows in this post will sound familiar.
 
On Memorial Day weekend, I spent some time in northeastern Pennsylvania. This would be my only “research trip” per se of 2022.  It was a research trip along the lines of those trips in the pre-pandemic years. However, having already finished most of the intensive research to be done in the region, I concentrated on polishing—taking fresh and hopefully much better photos of church interiors I originally photographed >20 years ago (with different tech and decidedly mixed results).
 
Some thoughts: in 2022 the number of Rusyn-founded church buildings from the immigrant era is still quite large, but those with what resembles their original interior are rather few. Icon screens have been replaced (or added, where there had never been one), stained glass windows that probably had very interesting donor inscriptions not in English have been replaced, and even original cornerstones have been removed or replaced.
 
Church interiors I photographed that weekend include:

• St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church, Freeland, Luzerne Co.;
• St. Vladimir Ukrainian Catholic Church, Scranton, Lackawanna Co.;
• St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church, Scranton;
• St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church, Scranton;
• St. Nicholas Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church, Scranton;
• All Saints Orthodox Church, Olyphant, Lackawanna Co.

St. John's Byz. Cath. Church, Scranton

St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, Scranton

All Saints Orthodox Church, Olyphant

Clearly the primary stamp left on this region by Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants and their descendants is these churches, and they are lovely and inspiring, even if today it appears that many of these congregations must struggle to maintain them.

The crowning visit of the trip was Ss. Cyril & Methodius Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of Olyphant. There too I wanted to take better interior photos than I had taken 20+ years ago when my research was just beginning.

interior of Ss. Cyril & Methodius Church, Olyphant

In addition, I picked up the 125th anniversary booklet from 2013 (a humble production compared to the masterful centennial journal of 1988) and did some in-depth analysis of the marriage register from the pastorate (1891-1898) of the legendary Fr. Teofan Obuškevyč, also pastor at the time of St. John's Church in Mayfield (which was then a Greek Catholic church, now Orthodox since 1902) with care of the Rusyn immigrant communities in Jessup, Forest City, and Simpson, each of which eventually established their own churches.

first page of Fr. Obuškevyč's Olyphant/Mayfield marriage register from 1891

Fr. Obuškevyč’s corresponding baptismal register, interestingly, is kept at St. John's in Mayfield.
 
"St. Cyril's," founded 1888, with its 2nd church built in 1908, is a standout among the Slavic Eastern Christian churches of northeastern PA. It is one of the very few churches of its era whose interior features remain largely unchanged. These include a massive floor-to-ceiling iconostasis, window donors inscribed in Cyrillic, murals in western style but some depicting Eastern Slavic themes, a carved wood tabernacle, the original cornerstone, and carved choir loft stairs & pews.

It also stands out among the Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches in much of the rest of northeastern PA for keeping the traditional 3-bar cross, atop and inside the church, whereas others have generally replaced them with simple or stylized Latin or Greek crosses. (In 1998 I wrote a paper, published in 2006, about the Olyphant community and the development of St. Cyril’s from what was a largely Carpatho-Rusyn congregation with Russophile, Slovakophile, and Ukrainophile factions into a parish of strong Ukrainian public identity and a generally Ukrainian-identified membership.)

churchyard of Ss. Cyril & Methodius, Olyphant, May 2022

After trying to pin down how to access naturalization records from Lehigh and Northampton Counties, I learned that the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg had not only the Lehigh County records, but a plethora of naturalizations for other PA counties. (Northampton County docs are evidently only available at the county courthouse in Easton.) And so in May I began a series of visits to the archives to gather as many as possible of these documents for Rusyn immigrants like I’d done with many other PA counties, either at the county courthouses or via online services like Ancestry and FamilySearch. I’d hoped to be able to access original documents, as flipping through them in a bound volume to spot likely Rusyns is more efficient than going through reels of microfilm, but microfilm was what they have, so I made peace with my fate. So now after four day-long visits I now have a pretty decent selection of naturalization documents for Lehigh, Indiana, Fayette, Bradford, and Crawford Counties.

source: Google Maps street view

One surprise was that despite the large number of Rusyn immigrants to Lehigh County (mainly Allentown, Cementon, Coplay, Egypt, Emmaus, Fullerton, and Hokendauqua), their numbers were so dwarfed by huge numbers of immigrants from Germany and Hungary (mainly Slovenes and ethnic Magyars rather than Rusyns) who were naturalizing that the hours I spent with the Lehigh County reels did not yield a corresponding large number of documents for Rusyns.
 
Some of the other county records at the archives would seem to have possibly useful information (e.g., deeds, incorporations), but I may not have the motivation to spend a lot of time scrolling through more microfilm reels that might yield little to nothing of value. I still need to visit a few more times to finish up with these and several other counties’ (Carbon, Centre, Clearfield, Crawford, Dauphin, Greene) naturalization docs.
 
Even though I’d resolved to decline speaking engagements this year, I nevertheless wound up doing two presentations, both virtual on the now ubiquitous Zoom platform.
 
The first, in August, was part of the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center Summer Seminars series that continued the successful series of 2020 and 2021. My presentation “‘We’re Russian, But Not High Russian’: Flavors of Identity Among American Carpatho-Rusyns,” was based on my paper from the 2021 Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) national convention in New Orleans.

my presentation at the 2022 Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center Summer Seminar series

I analyzed the various streams of Russophilism and other types of Rus’- identity among Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants to the United States and their descendants as it manifested in the naming and activities of their religious, fraternal, and social organizations as well as how they were known and written about in their local communities’ newspapers.

my paper at the 2022 ASEEES Annual Convention

My other presentation, in October, was for the remote, virtual session of the hybrid remote/in-person ASEEES annual convention, whose in-person part was held in Chicago but reluctantly I chose not to attend this year. In “Icons, Murals, and Banners: The Material Culture of Carpatho-Rusyn Immigrant Churches,” on the Carpatho-Rusyn Visual Culture: North America panel, I talked about the artistic furnishings of American Carpatho-Rusyn churches: iconostases, the styles and subjects of icons, murals, and banners, and the backgrounds of those who created them—topics that to date have not been examined in depth.

The C-RRC Summer Seminars presentation videos are still supposed to be posted online at some point. I don't know if a video of the ASEEES presentations even exists. In any case, I do plan to post summaries of my presentations to at least share some of the basic info with a larger audience.
 
I obtained images of the pages of several dozen early issues not available in North American archives of the Amerykanskij Russkij Vîstnyk, print organ of the Greek Catholic Union, the oldest and largest nationwide Carpatho-Rusyn fraternal benefit society. These included several issues from 1892, its first year (sadly, not the very first issues) as well as others from 1897-1900 that were not microfilmed as part of the Carpatho-Ruthenian Microfilm Project.

front page of the ARV, 5/17 November 1892

A Beaver Meadows church society record book: I’ve been at this so long there are sometimes things I saved to follow up on and then have forgotten about. I rediscovered one of those things and finally followed up on it, now doing so here as I did on my social sites:

This "Gr. Kat. Russkij Cerkovnyj Spolok sv. Petra i Pavla [Greek Catholic Rusyn Church Society of Sts. Peter & Paul] record book: 1895 to 1904" associated with Saints Peter & Paul Byzantine Catholic Church in Beaver Meadows, Carbon County, was offered on eBay in 2009.
 
I tried hard to win it but I was outbid at the last second. I wonder if anyone reading this might have won it or know who did. The contents are of value to me for my upcoming book as well as personally, so I am mainly looking for some better images of the book and its contents. The seller included a list of names in the book, which I saved, but as an artifact and a source of European birthplaces of the lodge members, this is still one of the more valuable items I’ve ever seen offered on eBay and one I would like to at least have time to photograph in full.
 
I attended the Sheptytsky Institute’s webinar “Parting of the Ways: Ukrainian and Ruthenian Greco-Catholics in the United States 1880-1930” on Nov. 29 (now online). The speakers were Fr. Ivan Kaszczak (Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Stamford) and Fr. Christopher Zugger (Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Phoenix), led by Maria Ivaniv (Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies). Frs. Kaszczak and Zugger are both published authors who specialize in aspects of the history of the Ruthenian and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Churches in the U.S. and the homeland.

While the material covered was not new to me, there was much of value here. If I could offer some constructive criticism, some visual aids would have enlivened the presentations, and Fr. Dr. Kaszczak’s talk in particular seemed to assume the audience had extensive familiarity with the subject. I could imagine that at times some in the audience may have found it hard to follow. While the Sheptytsky Institute is an academic entity—the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies—the talk was promoted among the general public and one might expect their knowledge level to be more basic.
 
There were some notable events and transitions in the community:

• The closure of Nativity of the Mother of God Orthodox Church in Masontown, Fayette County, in June 2021, was announced by the Orthodox Church in America.
  
  

  

  Nativity of the Mother of God Orthodox Church in Masontown, Sept. 2021
  

• St. Vladimir’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of Edwardsville, Luzerne County, founded 1910, closed in February;
   
• The twinned Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic churches of St. Michael, Allentown, Lehigh County, and Ss. Peter & Paul, Palmerton, Carbon County, were put on the market and sold (February and April, respectively). Neither church had been holding services since July 2019. St. Michael’s was the original Rusyn church in Allentown, founded 1907, and Ss. Peter & Paul’s was founded in 1915.
  
  
• Metropolitan Herman (Swaiko), retired Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, died on Sep. 6. His parents were Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants and he grew up in Bairdford, Allegheny County, where the family was a member of St. Michael’s Orthodox Church in nearby Curtisville.
  
  

• 

  History of St. Stephen's Byz. Cath.
  Church, Leisenring
  

  St. Michael’s Orthodox Church (American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese) in Saint Clair, Schuylkill County, celebrated the 125th anniversary of its 1897 founding (November);
  
  
• St. Stephen’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Leisenring, Fayette County, published a book marking the 130th anniversary of its 1892 founding (November). The book is available for purchase.

What I’m Working on Right Now

Not having traveled much this year, I’ve concentrated on putting a lot of data into digital format for easier analysis. These include individual settlements according to mentions in parish metrical records, lists of fraternal benefit society lodges, deceased members listings from the various fraternal organizations (with the skilled assistance of a research partner), and key info from naturalization documents.

In the last few months I put together a number of Excel sheets listing early Carpatho-Rusyn settlers, "pioneers" (or for the small groups, just complete lists of all settlers I could identify) of far-flung/so-called ”lost” communities that were located far from organized settlements with a Rusyn church that would provide evidence of them, or in some places that became important settlements but did not have a local church until many years after the first immigrants came there.

So far I’ve compiled partial or nearly complete lists of pioneers (or all) Rusyn immigrants of these far-flung/"lost" communities:

• Cornwall, Lebanon County;
• Ganister / Franklin Forge, Blair County;
• Tyrone, Blair County;
• Bellefonte, Centre County;
• Bitumen and Renovo, Clinton County;
• Cross Fork and Betula, Potter and McKean Counties;
• Oil City, Venango County;
• Sheffield / Bradford areas, Warren and McKean Counties;
• Erie, Erie County;
• Girard / Edinboro / Columbus areas, Erie and Warren Counties
• Wood / Robertsdale area, Huntingdon (& others) County;
• Tyler / Byrnedale, Clearfield and Elk Counties.

source: TopoZone

In the case of Ganister / Franklin Forge, which was served for years from St. Mary’s Greek Catholic Church in Johnstown until a church was founded in the village, there are apparently no surviving records from the church (St. Mary’s Russian Orthodox, which closed several years ago). So I pieced together a list from the Johnstown records (which except for some death records has no villages of origin due to the original records being recopied without that info, then discarded), records from St. Mary’s Greek Catholic Church in Youngstown, Ohio – where many families from Ganister seem to have moved and there *is* information on their European birth villages, and death records of the Greek Catholic Union Lodge 443 of Ganister. I may still be able to get some more info from UROBA death claims, but I have yet to organize the images I captured of them at the University of Pittsburgh – one more project for the new year!

a portion of my list of Rusyn immigrants to Ganister/Franklin Forge
sourced from other churches' metrical records

Lists of the pioneer Rusyn settlers in large Rusyn communities as found in other churches’ metrical records years before the first local churches were founded:

• Pittsburgh city (mostly South Side) and Carnegie, Allegheny County;
• Mount Carmel, Northumberland County;
• Minersville and Saint Clair, Schuylkill County;
• McAdoo, Schuylkill County;
• Lansford, Coaldale, and Nesquehoning, Carbon & Schuylkill Counties;
• Sharon, Mercer County;
• Shire Oaks / Manown, Westmoreland County.

The above lists are important, and I would say essential, for telling the story accurately and with proper detail. But they are time-consuming and the real payoff won’t be until I write the histories of the individual communities.

How I Expect to Spend My Time in 2023

While there is some on-site church research I still hope to do (Berwick, St. Clair, Philadelphia, Chester, McKeesport), and a few archives where I need to spend some time (e.g., final visits to PA State Archives and county courthouses for pulling naturalization records), I have a lot of work at home to do. These activities include:

• Consolidation of existing digital files (images of archival documents, photo scans);
• Completion and correction of data files of fraternal lodge members (like from the RBO) and naturalization documents;
• Preparation of data files for mapping Rusyn and related points of interest in the major organized settlements;
• Completion of entry of data files on settlements, fraternal lodges, and pioneers;
• Printing microfilmed periodicals to digital images and photographing pages of disintegrating old newspapers from my own collection;
• Selection and scanning of photos from old church anniversary booklets and fraternal almanacs;
• Completion of the large essays for the book: notes, introduction, overview for each region, and glossary.

Will this all come to pass in just 12 months? It’s possible, but the more support I can recruit, the more likely it will happen.

I wish you the finest year ever in 2023 and hope you continue to follow my updates wherever and whenever they might appear.

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