Thinking Historically

This 1906 photo captures European immigrants of various ethnic and religious backgrounds on a ship bound for New York City. For the millions of immigrants that immigrated to the United States between about 1880 and 1920, this is how their immigration experience would begin. However, upon reaching the United States, the various different groups would have vastly different experiences.

These questions are designed to model the types of questions historians would ask when conducting research on any historical topic.

• For each of the nine primary source documents answer: Who is the author of the document?, Where was the document first published?, What is the intended audience of the document?, What information does the document contain?

• Why is it important to know and keep in mind that many of the documents were not originally written in English, but the Rusyn language?

• What questions does the fact that these documents are English translations raise?

• Why was their Greek Catholic faith so important to the Carpatho-Rusyns/how did it shape their identity?

• What challenges did the Carpatho-Rusyns face in establishing their Greek Catholic Churches in the United States?

• Did the type of challenges they faced change over time?

• Are there any common themes found in all nine documents?

• These documents were all written by Carpatho-Rusyns themselves, does that affect the historical narrative they create?

• Would documents created by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States create a different picture of the story?

• Does the story of the Carpatho-Rusyn people in the United States, confirm or challenge the historical narrative of the United States being the great "melting pot" narrative?

• How is story of the immigration and assimilation of Carpatho-Rusyn people the same/different from the story of other immigrant groups?

• What does the Carpatho-Rusyn story reveal anything about the story of immigration and assimilation of various immigrant groups in the United States?

This photo depicts Andrew and Mary (Kachmar) Hutsko on their wedding day at Saint Mary Pokrova Byzantine Catholic Church in Kingston, PA. Andrew was a Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant from Slovakia and Mary was the daughter of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants from Slovakia. Their marriage is an example of a common trend of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants marrying each other and starting families in the United States. For many immigrant groups in the United States, the early emphasis was on marrying and associated with immigrants of the same group, rather than assimilating with other Americans.

Comparing the Story of the Carpatho-Rusyns

• The Carpatho-Rusyns are just one example of the many different immigrant groups that have come to the United States in its over two-hundred-year history. Is there story unique? Or are there many similarities in their story to other immigrant groups?

• These activities below offer the chance to compare the Carpatho-Rusyn experience of immigration and assimilation to the experience of other immigrant groups in the United States. Each activity encourages the individual to spend some time researching the experience of different immigrant groups and determining how their experience of immigration and assimilation compares to the experience of the Carpatho-Rusyns as presented in the nine primary source documents included in this project.

• Activity #1: The Carpatho-Rusyns are an East Slavic people. How is their experience of immigration and assimilation similar/different from the experiences of other East Slavic immigrants like the Russians or Ukrainians?

• Activity#2: How is the Carpatho-Rusyns experience of immigration and assimilation similar/ different from the experiences of other Slavic immigrants likes the Poles and Slovaks?

• Activity#3: Since the Carpatho-Rusyns were Eastern Rite Greek Catholics, how is their experience of immigration and assimilation similar/different form the experience of earlier Roman Catholic immigrants to the United States like the Irish/Germans?

• Activity#4: How is the Carpatho-Rusyn experience of immigration and assimilation similar/different from the experiences of current immigrants arriving in the United States?

This photo depicts students at the parochial school established by Saint Mary's Greek Catholic Church in Freeland, PA. This is an example of the parochial schools established by the Greek Catholic churches to educated the American born children of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants in the faith and traditions of the Carpatho-Rusyn homeland in Europe. Like many other new immigrants in the United States, Carpatho-Rusyns wanted their children to learn the customs and traditions of their homeland rather than those of the United States.

• The story of the Carpatho-Rusyns and their immigration and assimilation in the United States, is important for what it reveals about historical narratives, like the United States being the great "melting pot" nation. Examining the experience of any immigrant group, not just the Carpatho-Rusyns, reveals that the history of immigration in the United States is much more complicated and complex than a narrative like the "melting pot" suggests.

• For every immigrant group in the United States, primary sources written by the immigrants themselves reveal that their experiences in the United States were often ones of great struggle, hardship, and discrimination. It is important for historians to examine the sources written by the immigrants themselves to get a clear picture of what their experience was actually like.

• For historians and those that study history, it is important to not just accept commonly held historical narratives as fact, but instead to use relevant primary sources to access the validity of those narratives. Often, as is the case with the nine primary source documents presented on the Carpatho-Rusyn experience, the commonly held historical narrative is either an oversimplification or just not factually correct.