Kodiak
Island off the south coast of Alaska where the Orthodox mission from Valaam arrived in September 1794 and built a church.
The mission from Valaam reached Kodiak in the autumn of 1794; its head wrote the next May that he had lived there since 24 September and that a church had been built (Valaam Monastery, History of the Kodiak Mission (1894), pp. 66, 68). Spruce Island, where Herman of Alaska lived and died, lies a short distance from it (Valaam Monastery, History of the Kodiak Mission (1894), p. 107). The coordinates given are those of the town and harbour of Kodiak. See Orthodox Monks Reach Alaska.
What happened here
- 24 September 1794, firm dateOrthodox Monks Reach Alaska
Ten missionaries, most of them monks of Valaam, cross Siberia and reach Kodiak Island in September 1794. Their letters report thousands of baptisms. The monk Herman stays for life, and the priest John Veniaminov, later Bishop Innocent, writes for the Aleuts in their own language.