St. Andrew Church (Killisnoo, Alaska)
St. Andrew Church was a church located in Killisnoo, Alaska that was founded by the Russian Orthodox Church as they evangelized Alaska. In 1928, the church, along with most of the village, burned down, and most of the residents decided to relocate to other villages. As a result, rather than rebuilding St. Andrew, a new church, St. John the Baptist, was built in the nearby village of Angoon.
The village of Killisnoo, Alaska was established around 1881 because a company set up a fish processing plant nearby, and many members of the Hutsnuwu tribe of Tlingit Indians moved there from surrounding villages in order to work there. The construction of a church soon followed. This church was named in honor of Apostle Andrew, the First-Called. There are a fair number of pictures taken of St. Andrew Church while it still stood because Fr. Ioann Soboleff, who was assigned to Killisnoo, had a son named Vincent who was a photographer who took many pictures of the area. Many of these are available through the Alaska Digital Archives website.
Contents
Clergy
(incomplete list)
- Fr. Andrew Kashevaroff (1893-1894)
- Fr. Ioann Soboleff
- Hieromonk Peter Zaichenko (1914-1915)
Sources
- United States Department of the Interior National Park Service Historical Site Nomination documentation for St. John the Baptist and other Alaskan churches
- Alaskan Clerical News, 1917
- US Geolological Survey Place Name information
- Collection of Vincent Soboleff photos at Alaska's Digital Archives
- On the Life of Hieromonk Peter Zaichenko Ss. Peter and Paul Church, Phoenix, Arizona
External Links
- Alaska Digital Archives, search results for "Killisnoo" and "church"
- A Russian American Photographing Native Alaska article from the New York Times
Books
- A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska by Sergei Kan, University of Oklahoma Press 2013, hardcover, 271 pages, 137 black and white photographs of people and scenes in Killisnoo and southeastern Alaska taken circa 1910, ISBN 9780806142906