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Father Veniaminov, the Enlightener of Alaska

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

Helen A. Shenitz*
Affiliation:
Alaska Historical Library and Museum, Juneau, Alaska

Extract

On August 26, 1797, in the little village of Anginskoe, Irkutsk Province, a boy was born to the local sacristan Popov and his wife, and was given the name of Ivan.

Little Ivan was a bright child. At the age of four the boy, under the tutelage of his ailing father, had started to read, and by 1803, when his father died, the boy read fluently.

To ease the burden of Ivan's mother, now a widow with four children, Ivan's uncle, who was his father's brother and the local deacon, took the boy into his own family.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1959

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References

1 Referred to in R. H. Geoghegan's letter to Judge Wickersham, May 12, 1939. The letter is in the collection of the Alaska Historical Library and Museum, Juneau, Alaska.

2 Father Veniaminov kept a diary of his ecclesiastic duties on the Aleutian Islands (Alaska Historical Library and Museum; microfilm copy, Library of Congress). In the diary he states that these Roman Catholic Missionaries were Jesuits; however, a local Roman Catholic priest states that they were Franciscans.