Matthew and Anna

The land for St Tikhons was formerly a farm owned by E. Wagner. It was purchased for $2580 on June 26, 1905 and dedicated on July 31, 1905.  The original intent was for a place that would serve as a "mother house for the monastics serving as clergy in the Orthodox North American mission" and as an orphanage for orphaned children of Russians in the US. At first the existing frame house was used as a residence for the orphans, with a hallway serving as a makeshift chapel. The cornerstone for the monastery was laid on December 21 and the consecration and formal opening ceremonies were held on May 30, 1906.

I am explaining all this to put my grandparents' history in context.  Daisy's parents, my grandparents, arrived in the U.S. sometime between 1904-1905.  They were married at St. Michael the Archangel, Passaic, NJ on May 19, 1906 and moved to Simpson, PA sometime within the next 2 years. His name was either Matthew or Michael Orinick.  All land and census records list him as Michael, but his headstone reads Matthew and the ship record that I found that is the closest to listing a person like him is for a Matwei Orens, arriving Mar 23, 1905 on the ship The Statendam from Rotterdam to New York. The manifest lists him as a 21 yr old man from Russia/Lithuanian, last home Gersky destination Mt. Carmel, PA. to join a brother. I will refer to him as Matthew, since that is the name his children knew him as.  There were several other Orinicks in Pennsylvania before he arived, so I don't know which was the brother he was meeting.  The term brother may have been used loosely since the other Orinicks in the area seem older and were more likely uncles or cousins.  Matthew was one of at least 7 children.  I do know that one brother - Wasyl, and two sisters - Mary and  Anna arrived in the U.S. around the same time.

His future wife, Anna Selestak, may have arrived a year earlier.  I found a record for Anna Szelesztak arriving in New York on Oct 14, 1904 on the Ultonia from Fiume.  She was listed as age 16 and Polish.  This makes some sense because relatives who later ontacted us were living in Legnava, Slovakia.  This region has alternately been a part of Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On some census records, her country of origin is listed as Galicia, which is a 15th century designation for the same area.  I believe Anna was the oldest of 8 children.  I also have documentation of a brother - Hnat and 2 sisters - Eva and Julia, living in the U.S. in the early 1900s

After working in the coal mines near Scranton for 20 years, Matthew contracted Black Lung disease. To get away from the mines, he bought a farm a few miles outside of Waymart and moved the family there.  This farm is only a few miles from St Tikhons.  This church was fairly new at the time, and attracted other Russian families to the area. Matthew and Anna are now buried in the cemetery there, as are 4 of my mother's sisters.

Life was hard for Matthew & Anna.  I don't think Anna ever learned to speak English.  While Matthew worked the mines they lived in the town of Simpson, near relatives and with other Russian speaking families.  As the years went by, brothers and sisters moved away.  Once Matthew moved the family to the farm, Anna must have felt very isolated.  It wasn't easy to travel in those days, so I imagine Anna sticking close to home mostly.  Her main contact with other people was probably at church.  Between 1907 and  1928 she gave birth to 13 children, including a set of twin who died as infants.

This is an aerial photo of the farm, probably taken in the 1940's.

Matthew died in 1935 when their youngest child was 7.  Their oldest sons, Mike and Bill, were 20 and 17 at the time.  Anna died a few years later in 1939.  Mike took over the farm originally, but that wasn't the life he wanted, so he eventually turned it over to Bill.  Bill and his wife Hedy ran the farm for a number of years, but when they divorced, the third brother, Ted took over.   The farm remains in the family to this date, although some of it has been divided and sold.  That's another story.