www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Old-Ritualists Forum Old Believers parish in Marianna, PA

I'm not very familiar with Old Believers, but I have some info that may be interesting to those who are. A distant cousin on my mother's Polish side has a geneology site which has a baptismal certificate from the Old Believers Church in Marianna, Washington County (southwestern) Pennsylvania.
It was the 6th baptism in 1918 in the church built by the mining company. It was signed by Rev C. Phillips.
The "Reverend" was printed on the form. The signature C. Phillips looks unusual because its not in the European style, but rather the American style. This makes me wonder if C Phillips was actually an employee of the mining company which kept the records. The person baptised was Clara Alexander. The geneology places the birthplace of her parents in Russian occupied Poland, close to where the Prussians were and very close to Lithuania.
I have a photo of the baptismal record if anyone is interested. You can find a picture of the church here: http://www.coalcampusa.com/westpa/klondike/marianna/marianna.htm

Deacon Paul,

I'm intrigued - the name certainly sounds unlikely for an Old Believer. Tom might have some insights here.

(Nice link [coalcampusa.com], btw. The site belongs to Chris Dellamea, great-grandson of a Sicilian-born coal miner, who has spent more than a decade documenting the coal camps and patches. Over the past several years, Chris has been been extremely generous in allowing me to freely use his photos from the site to illustrate parish directory entries.)

Many years,

Neil

Interestingly, I learned from a friend in the Erie Old Believer community that indeed there was a "nastavnik" (teacher or reader), Rev. C. Phillips, in the Marianna church in 1918. Why did he have such an Americanized name? Probably because his original Russian name was too difficult for an Ellis Island immigration officer to write.

By the way, the Marianna church just celebrated the 100th anniversary of their founding a few years ago. They are older than the Erie church and once were even larger in membership than Erie.

Hello,
I'd also like to thank you for the link to the history of the Marianna, and other coal mining towns of the era. I thought you all might be interested to know that I have come across this name as well recently. In a Sunday School weekly of the Church of the Nativity from January 26, 1969 there is a reprint of a letter from the secretary of the church in Marianna to the then Reverend in Erie. It says that, "...as you all know, our Rev. Charles Philips (one L, but could very well be a typo) died a few weeks ago and now we are in a dire need of a priest, so we are asking you, the Reverend of the Church, and any one concerned, that if anybody of our faith is interested and has the qualifications of a priest, we would like for him to notify us as soon as possible. Please pass this word on to everyone possible..."
I probably don't need to note that his use of the word priest doesn't mean it they were priested, he means nastavnik, this is long before the Erie church became priested and joined ROCOR. Also, it's possible that his family changed the name to Philips, surnames were altered. Since he was already a priest in 1918 he was the officiate of the church for a very long time. Given that he was already adult at that early date of the community, he is at most a first generation Russian. So I would think that it is much more likely that his surname was altered than him having an Old Believer mother and American father (and hence Anglo surname).