Life in the US

When Mikhail Fairneny came to the United States, he settled in a house in the South End of Boston by the current Tufts Hospital. Once he came to Boston, he began his career as a priest at St John of Damascus where he was the first Syrian Orthodox priest in New England. He stayed here throughout the entirety of his life and eventually started a family.

Immigration

Many Syrians began to migrate out of Syria as the Ottoman Empire began to deteriorate. Families all across the country chose to look for new opportunities in the United States. At the beginning of the Syrian migration to Boston, it was mostly men coming to the country looking for permanent settlement and work. Many of these men came over without any English literacy and speaking abilities and others came with debt from there past situations. Soon after, these men were able to bring their families over but not for long. In 1924 , the National Origins Act of 1924 capped out the amount of legal immigrants allowed to come to the United States. Boston's "South Cove" was home to primarily Syrians and Chinese and was known as Little Syria. Little Syria was primarily Christian so the populations were separated by the three churches Maronite, Melkite, and Orthodox. As the population grew, many different groups of immigrants began flooding into the neighborhood and a lot of different local business began to emerge and a community was created.