Schuylkill Hub Search

New immigration (1880s–1920s)

The Carpatho-Rusyns, Ukrainians & Ruthenians of Schuylkill County

The Byzantine-rite Christians of the new immigration — the people behind America’s first Greek Catholic parish, and the most contested ethnic identity in the county’s history. This profile is meticulous about the Rusyn / Ukrainian / Russian labels and follows the parish-register scholarship of Richard D. Custer. Markers: ★ verified · ✔ confirmed · ✎ corrects a common error · ⚑ open/contested.

Overview: one people, three names

The Eastern-rite Slavs who reached Schuylkill County in the 1880s built America’s first Greek Catholic parish (St. Michael’s, Shenandoah, 1884) and dotted the coal towns with onion-domed churches — and they remain the hardest group in the county to name, because their identity is claimed by three competing national labels: Ukrainian, Carpatho-Rusyn (Ruthenian), and Russian. The same churches, people, and societies are described as “Ukrainian” by the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy and a 1984 state historical marker, as “Carpatho-Rusyn” by the Greek Catholic Union and the parish registers, and as “Russian” by the Orthodox parishes and the immigrants’ own naturalization papers.

This profile treats that contest as the heart of the story and follows the most rigorous primary-source authority on it: Richard D. Custer, whose analysis of St. Michael’s complete parish registers (baptisms 1884–1923, marriages 1885–1943, deaths 1886–1933), fraternal death-benefit databases, the 1905 Greek Catholic census, and Schuylkill County naturalization records directly tests — and contradicts — the official “Ukrainian” framing. The scholarly frame for the larger nationality question is Paul Robert Magocsi, the leading proponent of Rusyns as a distinct fourth East Slavic people.

✎ Throughout: “Greek Catholic” = Byzantine-rite Catholic (in union with Rome, with married clergy, Church Slavonic liturgy, and the Julian calendar) — NOT Hellenic/Greek. “Russian Orthodox” here is largely a jurisdictional label over an ethnically Rusyn population.

Sources: Richard D. Custer, “St. Michael’s Church of Shenandoah: Founded by Ukrainian Immigrants?” (rusynsofpa.blogspot.com, 2015); Wikipedia — Paul Robert Magocsi; Wikipedia — Rusyns.

Father Ivan Volansky and the first Greek Catholic parish in America (1884)

The community’s founder was Father Ivan Volansky (Voliansky), a married priest from Galicia sent in 1884 by Metropolitan Sylvester Sembratovych of Lviv in answer to a letter from the Ruthenian faithful of Shenandoah (“Lacking to us is God, Whom we could adore in our own way”). His wife Pavlyna accompanied him. ★ Shenandoah’s St. Michael the Archangel thus became the first Greek Catholic parish in America, and Volansky a remarkable institution-builder. By the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy’s own account, he:

  • established the first mutual-aid Brotherhood of St. Nicholas (Shenandoah, January 18, 1885);
  • built the first Eastern Catholic church in America (Shenandoah, 1886);
  • founded reading rooms (chytalni), schools, and the first choir;
  • created trade cooperatives — including the Shenandoah co-op store “Ruska torhovlja,” advertised in his newspaper in February 1886;
  • founded and edited the first Ruthenian-American newspaper, Ameryka (first issue August 15, 1886);
  • and, as a member of the Knights of Labor, “fought for the rights of workers in the mining region.” ★

His tenure ended in a conflict that would reshape Eastern-rite America: the Latin hierarchy objected to married Greek Catholic clergy, and Metropolitan Sembratovych recalled him in June 1889 (he later did missionary work among Ukrainians in Brazil). ★ That celibacy conflict is the hinge of the next two sections.

⚑ Dating note: the parish/congregation dates to 1884; the first church building to 1885–86; a second church to 1908; the current Byzantine-style church to 1983 (after a 1980 Easter fire). And a citation caution: the English Wikipedia “Ivan Volansky” article mis-links his arrival to “Shenandoah, Virginia” — it was Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.

Sources: Archeparchy of Philadelphia — “Father Ivan Voliansky… First Greek Catholic Priest in America (1884)”; ExplorePAhistory — St. Michael’s marker; Custer.

Who were they, really? Custer’s register analysis

The official story calls St. Michael’s “the first Ukrainian Catholic church in America.” Custer’s parish-register analysis reaches a categorical, evidence-based opposite conclusion:

“The founders were Carpatho-Rusyns from the Lemko Region and the Prešov Region who did not consider themselves to be Ukrainians and by and large never developed a Ukrainian identity. To call them Ukrainians is historically inaccurate.” ★

The documentary spine of his finding:

  • The first Greek Catholic immigrant in Shenandoah was Osyf Zoljak (Joseph Zoliak), born in Vŷsova, Gorlice County — the western Lemko Region of Galicia (today SE Poland). The original 1884 trustees trace overwhelmingly to Lemko villages (Hančova, Ripkŷ, Tŷlyč, Volja Nyžnja, Vŷsova, Kvjaton’), with a minority from the Prešov Region (today eastern Slovakia). The genuinely Ukrainian (eastern-Galician) element “was always small, mostly limited to a number of families from the village of Nastasiv.” ★
  • The 1908 cornerstone of the second church read “Russka hr. kat. Cerkov’” (“Rusyn/Russian Greek Catholic Church”) — not Ukrainian. The original cemetery cross read: “Here rest Rusyns of the Greek Catholic faith who have died from the years 1885 to 1889.” ★
  • For most of its life the parish called itself simply “St. Michael’s Greek Catholic Church” (Greek School, Greek Band); the 1959 diamond-jubilee book described the people as “from Galicia and Carpatho-Rus’… Eastern or Byzantine Rite,” with no mention of Ukrainians. It was only the 1984 centennial book that recast the parish as Ukrainian and “the first Ukrainian Catholic church… in the United States” — a shift that hardened after a devastating Easter-Sunday 1980 fire destroyed the church and the parish rebuilt in modern Ukrainian Byzantine style, deliberately omitting the traditional three-bar “Russian” cross. ★
  • In Schuylkill County naturalization papers of 1932–41, immigrants from these Rusyn villages overwhelmingly recorded their “race” as “Russian” (the Lemkos) or “Slovak” (the Prešov-region people) — almost never “Ukrainian.” ★

Custer’s fair concession: because St. Michael’s was assigned to the Galician (later Ukrainian) jurisdiction in 1916 and remains in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, “one can justifiably say that it is the ‘first Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the U.S.’ But it is not exclusively that.” ★ ✎ Projecting the post-1924 Ukrainian-vs-Ruthenian split back onto the 1884 founding is anachronistic: before ~1899, essentially every Greek Catholic parish was a mixed Galician + Subcarpathian community whose people called themselves simply Rusynŷ / Rusnacy.

Sources: Custer — St. Michael’s (2015); Righetti, “Richard Custer Investigates Pennsylvania’s Rusyn Community” (Lemko.org).

The fraternal world: the Greek Catholic Union and the Rusyn nation

The Rusyns built their national identity through fraternal-benefit societies as much as through churches. The great one was the Greek Catholic Union of Rusyn Brotherhoods (Sojedinenije, GCU), founded by the union of fourteen lodges at Wilkes-Barre on February 14, 1892, with the newspaper Amerikansky Russky Viestnik (“American Rusyn Messenger”). The GCU peaked above 130,000 members in 1,000+ lodges in the 1920s and “consistently opposed the notion that Rusyns are Ukrainians, arguing instead that they are a distinct nationality” — making it the organized counterweight to the Ukrainian framing. ★ Its first editor, Pavel (Paul) Zatkovich of Subcarpathian Uzhhorod, edited the Viestnik for 22 years; his funeral was held in Minersville and he was buried in Pottsville, and his son Gregory became the first Governor of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. ★

Shenandoah supplied two GCU charter lodges — Volansky’s Brotherhood of St. Nicholas (1885) and the Brotherhood of St. Michael, Lodge 8 (1889) — and the Russian Brotherhood Organization (RBO) was founded in Mahanoy City in 1900, with four of its six original national officers from Shenandoah. Custer’s analysis of RBO death claims (1900–59) is decisive on identity: 69% came from Austria/Galicia (overwhelmingly the Lemko Region), and 86% identified as Greek Catholic — even though a Russian Orthodox parish existed in Shenandoah from 1916. ★ A parallel society, the Russian National Union, renamed itself the Ukrainian National Association (UNA) in 1914, drawing the more eastern-Galician (Ukrainian-identifying) families — the institutional fork between Rusyn and Ukrainian identity made visible.

Sources: Wikipedia — Greek Catholic Union of the USA; Michael Roman, “Paul J. Zatkovich — First GCU Editor” (carpatho-rusyn.org); Custer — St. Michael’s.

The Orthodox “return”: Father Alexis Toth and the schism cluster

The same celibacy conflict that recalled Volansky drove thousands of Greek Catholics out of Rome and into Russian Orthodoxy. The catalyst was Father Alexis Toth (St. Alexis of Wilkes-Barre, canonized 1994): when Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul refused in 1889 to recognize the married Toth as a Catholic priest, Toth led his Minneapolis parish into the Russian Orthodox Church (1891) and became the chief agent of a “return” movement that brought an estimated 20,000 Eastern Catholics to Orthodoxy. ★

In Schuylkill County the movement produced a schism cluster of 1906–1916, and — crucially — the OCA’s own parish history confirms these “Russian” Orthodox were Lemko Carpatho-Rusyns, disillusioned by Latinization pressures and the married-clergy disputes, who turned to the Russian Church because it was “the only Orthodox Church with a stable, recognized presence in North America” that let them keep their Byzantine identity: ★

  • Holy Ascension Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, Frackville — organized 1914, cornerstone blessed by Archbishop Evdokim June 15, 1915, roots in named Lemko villages; its golden domes remain a Frackville landmark.
  • St. Michael’s Orthodox Church, Mount Carmel (adjacent Northumberland County) — brotherhood organized 1906–07, church completed 1908, gifted an ornate sanctuary cross by Tsar Nicholas II.
  • Holy Ghost Russian Orthodox Church, Shenandoah — formed in 1916 by Lemko Rusyn families who left St. Michael’s, reportedly reacting to its Ukrainian orientation.

These parishes joined the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church (the “Metropolia”), which became the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America (OCA) in 1970. As Custer summarizes the statewide pattern: “the vast majority of Russian Orthodox Churches in the state were actually not comprised of Russians at all, but Carpatho-Rusyns.” ★

Sources: Wikipedia — Alexis Toth; OCA — Holy Ascension Church, Frackville; St. Michael’s Orthodox Church, Mt. Carmel — parish history; Custer / Righetti (Lemko.org).

The 1916/1924 split: the structural root of “Ukrainian” vs. “Ruthenian”

The labels hardened through Church jurisdiction. On the 1916 death of Bishop Soter Ortynsky (the first U.S. Greek Catholic bishop, a Galician widely rejected by Subcarpathian clergy), Rome divided the American Greek Catholic Church along nationality lines — a Galician administration and a Subcarpathian one — and St. Michael’s Shenandoah was assigned to the Galician (later Ukrainian) side. ★ On March 8, 1924, two apostolic exarchates were erected: the Ukrainian (Galician) under Bishop Constantine Bohachevsky, see in Philadelphia; and the Ruthenian/Rusyn (Subcarpathian, Slovak, Croatian) under Bishop Basil Takach, see in Pittsburgh (later Munhall). ★ This jurisdictional fork — not the immigrants’ own 1884 self-understanding — is the mechanical reason St. Michael’s is today a “Ukrainian” parish, while neighboring communities became “Byzantine (Ruthenian) Catholic” or “Russian Orthodox.”

Sources: Archeparchy of Philadelphia — history; Archeparchy of Pittsburgh — history; Custer.

The churches across the county

The “distinctive onion-domed houses of worship” of the Byzantine Slavs still mark the county’s skyline. ★

Ukrainian Catholic (Archeparchy of Philadelphia): St. Michael the Archangel (Shenandoah, 1884; current church 1983), St. Nicholas (Minersville, from St. George 1896, became St. Nicholas 1916), St. Michael the Archangel (Frackville, 1921), Holy Trinity (St. Clair), St. John’s (Gilberton), St. Nicholas (Mahanoy City, a new Galician/Ukrainian parish formed 1923), and the Patronage of the Mother of God / St. Mary’s (McAdoo, founded 1891).

Russian / Carpatho-Russian Orthodox (OCA, Frackville Deanery): Holy Ascension (Frackville, 1915), Holy Ghost (Shenandoah, 1916), and the adjacent St. Michael’s (Mount Carmel, 1908).

Sources: Times News — “Schuylkill County: Ukrainian mecca” (2022); Archeparchy parish pages — Minersville, Frackville, McAdoo; OCA — Frackville.

Culture and the identity debate

The immigrants brought a full Byzantine folk culture: the chytalni reading rooms, the Cyrillic press, parish choirs, trade cooperatives, the Julian (Eastern) calendar (St. Michael’s Mt. Carmel only adopted the revised calendar’s December 25 Nativity by vote in 1974), and Easter traditions including pysanky and paska bread. Custer’s pointed observation captures the lived reality of the contested identity: these people “still live Rusyn culture, serving Rusyn foods, singing Rusyn songs, preserving Rusyn customs, but calling it all ‘Russian.’” ★

The scholarly question beneath it all — are Rusyns a branch of the Russian nation, of the Ukrainian nation, or a distinct fourth East Slavic nationality? — is the life work of Paul Robert Magocsi (Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto), the leading proponent of the distinct-nationality view and co-compiler of the Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture. The institutional fault line maps directly onto it: the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy frames the population as Ukrainian; the GCU and the Magocsi school insist they are a distinct Rusyn people. Schuylkill County is, in microcosm, the American battleground of that question. ★

Sources: Custer / Righetti (Lemko.org); Wikipedia — Paul Robert Magocsi; Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center — “Does a Fourth Rus’ Exist?”.

People and modern heritage

  • Father Ivan Volansky — founder of St. Michael’s and Eastern-rite America; Knights of Labor member and cooperative-builder. ★
  • St. Alexis Toth — architect of the Orthodox “return.” ★
  • Paul Zatkovich — first GCU editor (Minersville funeral, Pottsville burial); his son the first Governor of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. ★
  • Richard D. Custer — the modern primary authority on the county’s Rusyn community; Paul Robert Magocsi — the scholar of Rusyn nationhood.

Schuylkill County today has the highest concentration of Ukrainian-ancestry residents in the United States — four of the top-ten American communities by Ukrainian-descent concentration (Cass Township, Gilberton, St. Clair, Frackville) are in the county — even as the parishes themselves decline (Mt. Carmel’s Orthodox parish fell from 300 to ~50). As established in the census spine, this density is part of the broader new-immigration record. The original 1885/86 wood-frame St. Michael’s — bearing the sign “First Greek Catholic Church in America” — was demolished around 2015, prompting both Ukrainian preservation efforts and Custer’s blog reply disputing the exclusively-Ukrainian framing: the perfect emblem of a heritage that three nations still claim. ★

Sources: Times News — “Ukrainian mecca”; St. Michael’s Orthodox, Mt. Carmel; Custer.

Open questions

  • A parish-internal primary source for Holy Ghost Russian Orthodox, Shenandoah (1916), beyond Custer’s secondary account. (A parish-internal naming detail has surfaced — it was originally the “Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church Brotherhood of the Holy Ghost,” renamed “The Holy Ghost Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church” on January 22, 1968 — but its current status/jurisdiction is best confirmed with the ACROD chancery, Johnstown.)
  • The full inventory of the county’s Byzantine Catholic (Ruthenian) vs. Ukrainian Catholic vs. Orthodox parishes with founding dates and current status.
  • The Lemko-village origin mapping (Custer’s data) as a settlement map.
  • How modern parishioners at St. Michael’s and the Orthodox parishes self-identify today (Ukrainian / Rusyn / Russian).

The Greek-Catholic Slovak overlap is treated in the Slovaks profile; for the Lithuanian–Polish parish disputes of the same coal towns, see the Poles profile.

Sources

Frequently asked

Where was the first Greek Catholic parish in America?
Shenandoah, Schuylkill County. St. Michael the Archangel was founded in 1884 by Father Ivan Volansky, a married priest sent from Lviv; it became the first Greek Catholic (Byzantine-rite Catholic) parish in America, and Volansky built the first Eastern Catholic church here in 1886.
Were the founders of St. Michael's, Shenandoah, Ukrainians?
Richard D. Custer's analysis of the parish registers concludes the founders were Carpatho-Rusyns from the Lemko and Prešov Regions who did not consider themselves Ukrainians. Because St. Michael's was assigned to the Galician (later Ukrainian) jurisdiction in 1916, it can be called the first Ukrainian Greek Catholic church in the U.S. — but, Custer notes, not exclusively that.
Why are the same churches called Ukrainian, Carpatho-Rusyn, and Russian?
The identity is claimed by three competing national labels. The Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy and a 1984 marker call the people Ukrainian; the Greek Catholic Union and the parish registers call them Carpatho-Rusyn (Ruthenian); and the Orthodox parishes and immigrants' naturalization papers say Russian. Custer notes many 'still live Rusyn culture… but calling it all Russian.'

Towns: Shenandoah, Mahanoy City, Minersville, Frackville, Saint Clair, Gilberton, McAdoo, Pottsville

Related peoples: Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians

People: Ivan Volansky (1857–1926)

← All cultures & peoples · Census spine →