On Saturday, May 2, the Westmoreland County Historical Society (WCHS), in conjunction with the Carpatho-Rusyn Society (CRS), hosted a day-long seminar, "Numerous yet Unknown: the Carpatho-Rusyns of Western Pennsylvania." Taking place on the spacious grounds of the Greensburg Garden Civic Center in Greensburg, PA, the seminar covered topics ranging from Rusyn history to the Rusyn immigrant experience in Pennsylvania to genealogy, and folk customs. Conference participants were also treated to a live performance of authentic Rusyn folk songs. The conference was a "sell-out", with 120 people in attendance. People cane from as far away as Colorado, California, Illinois, Florida, and North Carolina. The evening concluded with a reception on the Greensburg campus of the University of Pittsburgh. The considerable public interest generated by the event surprised even its organizers, who for reasons of limited space, had to turn away almost 300 more interested people. A repeat event is planned for next year in order to meet this public demand.

People begin to show up early Saturday morning at the Civic Center to register and pick over the offerings at the "Rusyn Market": books, audio and video tapes, mugs and other objects with Rusyn themes. Even an unpretentious little fridge magnet imprinted with "Rusyn Kitchens are Filled with Love" carries revolutionary connotations when one recalls that 10 years ago Rusyns in Europe did not have a community organization specifically devoted to their needs. Rusyns in the United States were more fortunate to have had the Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center (CRRC) and its informative publication, Carpatho-Rusyn American.. .but they didn't yet have the C-RS and its motley collection of talented and fanatically dedicated Rusyn-Americans who together make events like this possible.

I walk into the Civic Center's conference hall. It looks like a mainstream American conference: microphone, audio-visual equipment, podium, assorted refreshments, coffee, tea, donuts. Conference packet materials are placed at every seat. I stop to speak with Richard Brown, executive director of the Westmoreland County Historical Society (WCHS). He tells me that the WCHS is, "...based in Greensburg and dedicated to preserving and disseminating historical data pertinent to Westmoreland County, which today is larger than the state of Rhode Island, but previously encompassed all of western Pennsylvania. "

Why has the WCHS chosen the Rusyns as the subject of its conference - are there many Rusyn members in the WCHS?

"The WCHS membership, " Brown answers, " . . . is at about one thousand; 80% are of Western European heritage and 20% are of Eastern European background. The historical sites we have here [in Westmoreland County] are mostly related to the French and Indian War (1754-1763) and the founding of the country. As a result, our organizational activities have focused on the founding of the United States, the American Revolution (1776-1783), the Civil War (1860-1865) and our role in those events. We've neglected later history, such as the industrialization of the United States."

"We knew, however, that our membership was changing and that in order to meet its changing needs we had to define who our membership is today. We started to realize that the majority were descendants of people who had arrived in the United States much later than the American Revolution and the Civil War. They are what we refer to as 'second-boat' immigrants...."

Wait: 'second boat' immigrants? "

Yes, " laughs Rich Brown. "The 'first boat ' is, symbolically speaking, the Mayflower [the ship whose 1620 arrival brought the earliest immigrants to the 'New World'. The arrival of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and the massive famine-driven migration from Ireland [1840s-1850s], together made up the 'first boat' immigrants. Beginning in the 1880s you get the 'second boat' immigration to America of East European immigrants. This distinct second wave of immigrants has influenced our culture and way of life. They worked in the factories and coal mines of the then industrializing United States. The first boat is primarily concerned with abandoning their European roots; they trace their ancestors back only to the point at which they arrived in America. The second boat, on the other hand, struggles to regain and retain its European roots."

How does Rich Brown's "first boat" root-searching experience differ from that of a "second boat" Carpatho-Rusyn like myself?

"We don't have an 'identity question' like you do," Brown answers. "Most first boat Americans focus on their American heritage. They take a lot of pride in saying that, '...my people have been here [in the United States] since 1640 or 1620.' We see that in such organizations as the Mayflower Society [which requires its members to provide genealogical evidence of ancestors connected to the Mayflower], the Sons of the American Revolution, [which requires evidence of ancestral connection to individuals living at that time], the Daughters of the American Revolution, etc. The assumption is that early arrival somehow makes you 'more American.' We always want to know who got us to America; we forget why we came in the first place or where we came from. We just want to know how long we've been here."

As the conference program begins. Rich Brown gives the opening remarks. He starts by recalling the origin of the idea for the genealogical conference: "Last year our program committee discussed what we would do in 1998. One of the suggestions was to explore the ethnic diversity of the population of southwestern Pennsylvania generally and Westmoreland County in particular. So, we started to look into it and asked ourselves, 'what is the largest ethnic group in our area?' Some people said it would be the Scotch, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians. We did our research and started to go through the census records and - surprise - the number one population throughout Westmoreland County and southwestern Pennsylvania is the Carpatho-Rusyns. Having learned that, we decided that we would put together today's program. It is hoped that this conference will help attendees to understand the unique history of their Rusyn immigrant ancestors, and help those conducting genealogical research to overcome hurdles in researching their rich Carpatho-Rusyn heritage."

Brown than introduces John Righetti, president of the C-RS, who presents a survey of Rusyn history, complete with maps and slide show. Mr. Righetti spoke fluently on the topic for nearly 2 hours, without benefit of prepared text. The first 45 minute session of his presentation concentrated on the history of Rusyns in Europe, from their origins until the present. The second session, separated from the first by a fifteen minute break, focuses on the Rusyn experience in the United States.

Righetti begins by raising some of the most confounding questions at the heart of the Rusyn experience: "Who are the Rusyns, and why is there so much confusion surrounding their identity?"

He speaks about the experience of numerically small ethnic groups situated in the cultural boundaries between numerically larger, more powerful civilizations. Such small "borderland minorities" have often had to fight to survive the political and cultural challenges of their larger neighbors and to define their own identities. He mentions a few such groups presently in Europe: the Frisians, the Alsatians, the Basques, ..and the Carpatho-Rusyns. The geography that made the Rusyns a borderland people predestined then to be caught up in the political, religious, cultural and military battles of others.

Righetti then surveys the complex migrations and interactions which eventually turned the "mysterious" White Croatian and Rus' tribes into ancestors of today's Carpatho-Rusyn people. Complicating this identity issue for the Rusyns was the fact that, as Righetti says, "Rusyn territory became the battle ground between east and west Christianity for nearly a thousand years. "

The second half of John Righetti's lecture focuses more on Rusyns in the United States. So why did Rusyns come to America?

"Let me correct some fallacies about why immigrants came to the United States. Of all of you seated here today, very few had ancestors who came for religious freedom or who came to stay permanently. The vast majority who cane from Europe to make money, go back [to Europe] and buy property. Here it not for quota laws passed by the United States in the 1920s [laws that disallowed immigrants from traveling back and forth] most of us sitting here today in this room would be living in Uzhorod, Presov or Sanok. "

Fear of oppression in the homeland had something to do with immigrants' choosing to stay in America: "Didn't you ever wonder, " Righetti asks the audience, "why your grandparents didn't want to talk about life in the Old Country? Didn't you ever wonder why they would say, 'I don't want to talk about it. Let's forget it - you're in American now'?" Righetti reads, by way of example, a graphic excerpt from Lemkyn 's History of Lemkovyna that detailed the oppression of peasants in the 1880s at the hands of powerful landlords who were free to physically, economically abuse the Rusyn peasants.

One reason that Rusyns faced an " identity crisis" in American was because, as Righetti notes, they had arrived in the United States without benefit of a waiting clergy. The Irish and other immigrant groups had churches and clergy already present in the United States. The Rusyns had to found and built churches themselves, before clergy had even arrived - Rusyn communities had to form their own fraternal organizations to provide basic social services like financial support for elderly, orphans and people injured at work.

Adding to the Rusyn immigrants ' identity confusion in America was that European battles were carried over into Rusyn parishes. Small Pennsylvania coal towns became the site of "foreign intrigue" as agents did the covert work of their governments: tzarist Russian agents attempted to "russify" Rusyn immigrants by persuading them that they were Orthodox; Hungarian agents, want ing to encourage Rusyn loyalty to their own government, attempted to persuade Rusyns that they were Greek Catholic "Hungarians. " Rusyn believers also suffered from efforts by American Roman Catholic church to "Americanize" the Rusyn churches' liturgy and clergy. In addition, growing ethnic divisions between Carpatho-Rusyns and Galician Ukrainians led many Rusyns to move to Orthodoxy. The eventual result, Righetti says, was that those who stayed in the traditional eastern churches were split into 5 different religious jurisdictions.

Righetti concludes with a quick overview of the Rusyn situation in Europe from World War I to the present day, saying that the situation of Rusyns in Europe is hopeful: "Since the fall of communism, Rusyns in all countries in which they reside have Rusyn cultural organizations, Rusyn presses, Rusyn folk ensembles. One of the challenges Rusyns face is that they are by and large not financially supported by governments in Europe. They turn to us, the American Rusyn community. Rusyns are recognized as an independent nationality in all countries in which they live with the exception of one: Ukraine. The Ukrainian government recently published a constitution listing more than 120 ethnic groups living in Ukraine - Rusyns are not among them! This is a great challenge, but not an insurmountable one. You are sitting in this room - proof that a people can overcome numerous seemingly insurmountable challenges."

We have a break between lectures. Many people are milling around outside the conference hall, talking. I hear snatches of conversation: "My Bother's people were from ....," "...I found this village on the map, but then....," "He's a great source for genealogical information...." I spot a couple who look like they need interviewing: John and Karen, who are from the Pittsburgh area.

What brings them to the conference - are they investigating a mysterious, unknown heritage?

"Yes...we just joined C-RS a few weeks ago," said John. "When I've asked my relatives about our background, I've heard that we ' re everything from 'Czechoslovakian ' to 'Slovak ' to 'Ukrainian." It's always been somewhat of a mystery to me."

Have they ever been to the Old Country?

"We've been to Europe, but not to the Old Country. We hope to go on the CRS tour next year. Attitudes [toward visiting the Old Country] change from generation to generation," John points out. "The mother of a friend of the family had an opportunity to go back, and wouldn't. She said, 'I left poverty behind, why would I want to go back?' The difference is between the first generation that was 'Americanized' and who wanted to forget negative experiences in Europe, and the second generation who is looking for its roots."

"I was interested, " John continued, ". -. in what John [Righetti] was saying [in his lecture j about the differences between western and eastern churches. My mother was Roman Catholic, my father Greek Catholic. I would go to one church one week, the other church the other week. We celebrated two Christmas holidays.

" How are the two Christmases different for John?

"The 25th [of December] was the 'material Christmas', the 7th [of January] more spiritual, less commercial. On the 7th I would see relatives that I wouldn't see more than once a year. The gifts came on the 25th, but the 7th had relatives and rituals. I haven't seen a guba costume [on display at the back of the conference hall] in probably 45 years and it was kind of startling to see it. Those memories are very rich."

The second featured speaker is Richard Ouster, one of founding members of C-RS and current editor of the New Rusyn Times, He has done extensive research on the religious life of Rusyns in Pennsylvania. His presentation, primarily visual in nature, takes the audience on an extensive slide tour of Rusyn churches in Westmoreland County and western Pennsylvania. Custer has amassed a slide tour to, as he tells us, "travel 100 miles in 45 minutes." Custer has been able to research the connections between villages of origin in Europe and place of settlement in Pennsylvania.

Custer begins by recalling that Rusyns started to immigrate to the United States in the mid-1870s, "...and by the early-1880s they had a lot people mostly in the hard coal region of northeast Pennsylvania." They eventually wrote to the Old Country for a priest, who came and in 1886 built the first Rusyn church in the western hemisphere. That building, Custer points out, still stands today. By the 1890s, there were Rusyn churches throughout western and central Pennsylvania, and in Passaic County, New Jersey.

"In most towns," Custer explains, "...coal mining was the major occupation and you had a varied ethnic makeup. In a lot of the small coal towns, however, you had mostly Eastern Europeans." He shows us a slide of New Salem, PA, in which is visible a Rusyn Orthodox church, a Rusyn Byzantine Catholic church and a Slovak Roman Catholic church.

Custer also discusses "chain migration," a phenomenon common among new immigrants even today: "Rusyns didn't come just one at a time and settle wherever they felt like. They settled in migration 'chains.' In any Rusyn community you could find many, many families who all had roots in the same [European] village or in a cluster of villages. A family or a couple would migrate and write back to their relatives in Europe and say, 'Oh, there's work here in Trauger. We're making good money. Why don't you come over and join us?' The letter writing was critical to chain migration. Most of these [Trauger-area] Rusyns cane from the county of Saris in northeastern Slovakia, and mostly from the villages of Kruzliv, Gerlachiv, Kruzliv, Kryve, Lukiv, Obrucne and Liviv. Many of our people chose to live in Hermine; it is beautiful, isolated and resembles the Carpathians quite a bit, " Custer added.

Custer shows slides of old photos of community service groups that formed around the Rusyn churches. These groups -such as the Ladies' Rusyn Social Club of McKees Port formed at the St. Nicholas Church in McKees Port - knew "who they were." These organizations were active as early as the 1930s. The brown-and white faces of working people dressed in their Sunday best look out at us from the old photos on the screen. They stand or sit in the old-fashioned, earnest, straight-backed, hands-folded, unsmiling European manner so different from the goofy American "obligatory-smile" response to being photographed. These ancestors seemed to understand that they were living history, that their photos would last a long time ...and might just show up one day in a history lecture.

Custer also contrasts the architectural styles of churches built by Rusyn communities in American with churches in Europe. Some American-Rusyn communities built their churches with three domes toped by crosses in the style of the Lemko region. One such church, St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Church, was built in Arnold in 1909. Another church, built in Scotdale in 1871, was on the other hand clearly influenced by the fast-paced American culture: it had in its bell tower both a cross and a.. ...clock. Perhaps the intent was to remind parishioners to get to church on time, or to let then know that it is never too late to return to the fold!

After lunch Tom Peters, a professional genealogist who specializes in Carpatho-Rusyn genealogy, gives a presentation addressing the unique problems Rusyn root-searchers encounter; he offers advise on how to overcome difficulties.

Peters begins by detailing his efforts to document his own Rusyn heritage: "My maternal grandmother died when my mother was only 12 years old, so when I asked my mother about our heritage, she couldn't tell me much."

He follows this description of his root-searching "travails" with step-by-step instructions on how root searchers can ascertain their ancestral village and other vital information. Peters has an extensive slide show of documents - baptismal certificates, steamship tickets, photos - and demonstrates how to analyze them for dates, places, family names.

Those in attendance receive a very helpful four-page handout which contains an article discussing the ethnic name confusion which Rusyns face in researching their heritage, as well as a list of useful references, sources of information, maps, the types of genealogical information necessary to begin a search (family name in Cyrillic and Latin spellings, village name, birth 13 and death dates, etc.) and a list of American record sources (such as steam ship passenger arrival lists; naturalization records; and military records; tombstones) to which the root-seeker can refer.

Immediately following Peter's talk is a "genealogy research roundtable" during which members of the C-RS's genealogy committee sit at various points in the conference hall and hold one-to-one consultations with root-seekers. Conference participants have 20-25 minutes to consult with Greg Gressa on searches in the Lemko region; Rich Custer advises with search problems in Pennsylvania; for general US and European searches, conference participants are directed to guest speaker Tom Peters; and John Righetti offers assistance with the translation of documents.

Following the research roundtable, conference participants are treated to the strong and expressive voice of Presov's own authentic Rusyn folk singer Beata Begeniova-Salak and the accordion work of her husband-accompanist, Michal Salak. Jerry Jumba introduces and discusses the origin and meaning of the various traditional Rusyn folk songs that the two folk artists performed. The first block of songs came from the Rusyn region in Slovakia, and include Zaspivajme sobi dvona holosami ("Let's Sing Together in Harmony"); a second block of songs is about love, and includes Bodaj psy valal'i, which Jumba tells us, ".. .expresses the feelings of longing felt by Rusyn girls and wives as they waited for their immigrant boyfriends and husbands to return from America.

At one point in the program, Beata selects two men from the audience, including guest speaker Tom Peters, to dance with her while her husband plays his accordion up on the stage. The wonderful performance is warmly applauded by the appreciative audience.

The afternoon has now passed into early evening; the last talk is John Righetti's discussion of Rusyn folk customs and superstitions. Righetti starts by noting that Rusyns, having been isolated for so long in the Carpathian mountains, preserved a wealth of early Slavic customs and superstitions.

When Christian missionaries came to the Carpathians, Righetti explained, they did not simply reject a population's pagan beliefs; instead, they "christianized" them. Thus, many of today's Rusyn religious customs and holidays have pagan origins: "We don't know much about the Rusyns' ancient beliefs," Righetti says, "...but we do know that they worshipped a pantheon of gods, one of which was the sun. The primary god was Perun - the god of thunder. We know that ancestor worship was an important element, and when you go to Rusyn communities, there is to this day almost an awe of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. "

Righetti then traces the origins of modern Easter customs, pointing out that on Palm Sunday Rusyns exchange pussy willows: "They did this centuries ago as pagans; the pussy willow represented the coming of spring. In Eastern Europe, the first plant life to emerge from the long, cold mountain winter was the pussy willow."

The "Easter egg" also predates Christianity, as are the patterns and symbols that appear on it and on Easter and wedding breads. Unlike Americans, Rusyns viewed both spiders and garlic as positive and lucky. Other plants, such as periwinkle were thought to have great power.

Inanimate objects, such as mirrors, also figured in Rusyn superstitions, as Righetti points out: "Those of you who are older may remember that when a Rusyn passed away - and in those days the body was laid out in the home - one of the first things the family did was to cover all of the mirrors in the house with a cloth. This was done so that the spirit of the dead person did not see its reflection and [mistaking its reflection for proof that it was still alive], remain in the house."

Righetti's descriptions of these traditional customs and superstitions provoke laughter from conference participants, who have their own memories. One custom in particular that brings up a lot of happy memories is the Easter custom of oblyvacka'. "On Easter Monday," Righetti explains, "...boys sprinkled water on girls and on Easter Tuesday, girls sprinkled water on boys." Righetti recalled how in his own youth "sprinkle" meant being soaked with an entire bucket of water.

Christmas Eve was also an important time for ritual. Rusyns having Christmas dinner traditionally took care to see that the first to be fed were the animals. This reflected the belief that 16 the animals in the manger were the first to greet the newly born Savior.

Righetti also covers customs related to Christmas day, courtship, marriage, death, sexuality and magic. His discussion of magic clearly fascinates the audience. He describes, for example, a ritual for discerning what was troubling a person: dripping candle wax into boiling water and then letting it cool and harden. The cooled shape which the wax made was believed to indicate that ailed the individual. "In essence you've exorcised the problem from the person by taking it away and putting it in the wax," Righetti concludes.

As the reception dinner hour draws near, Righetti concludes with the following: "Some Rusyn villages believed that the only way that a young woman could have good luck in getting a husband was if she killed a spider with the back of her left hand...and ate it." Better to stay single. *

The reception at the Greensburg campus of the University of Pittsburgh is attended by about 70 people, who socialized over a bounty of traditional American and Rusyn fare ( including, for example, spicy chicken wings and stuffed cabbage). An informal survey of people at the reception suggests that conference participants enjoyed the program and the fellowship a great deal. They delayed their departure from the reception until 9:30PM, the last possible moment.

Return to C-RS Home Page on the Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base