CARPATHO-RUSYnS Lecture on Slavic group at the Butler

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

John Schweich will deliver a lecture on the history of the Rusyns in Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, and their Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches, at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Butler Institute of American Art, 524 Wick Ave.

The end of the 19th century saw the arrival in this area of several thousand Carpatho-Rusyns, a distinct but stateless Slavic people who originated in what is today southeastern Poland, western Ukraine, eastern Slovakia and northeastern Hungary.

Predominantly farmers by background, they arrived in search of economic opportunities offered by the steel industry, and settled in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys and New Castle Pa., where they built churches, schools, cemeteries and fraternal and cultural organizations.

The Carpatho-Rusyns were most concentrated in Youngstown, Warren, Struthers, Campbell and Newton Falls

Schweich was born in northeastern Pennsylvania, near some of the earliest Slavic and Eastern European immigrant settlements in the United States.

He attended Pennsylvania State University and served in the U.S. Army, including a tour in Vietnam, where he was awarded a Bronze Star and a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

He then worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as a Russian linguist and specialized in outreach with the U.S. private sector and academia.

He also served as president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society and was subsequently elected as a trustee to C-RS National Board.

Over the years, he has collected about 1,500 church parish histories of Slavic (primarily Rusyn and Ukrainian, but also Serbian, Russian, Croatian and Slovak) communities, very likely the largest accumulation of its kind.