The small Oklahoma town of Hartshorne, some 15 miles away from the city of Macalister is still sometimes referred to as the Russian town. There, on top of a hill that the locals continue to call Russian stands the main historic sight of the area, an Orthodox Church of St. Cyril and Methodius.

The small Oklahoma town of Hartshorne, some 15 miles away from the city of Macalister is still sometimes referred to as the Russian town. There, on top of a hill that the locals continue to call Russian stands the main historic sight of the area, an Orthodox Church of St. Cyril and Methodius. It is a beautiful red-brick temple with three onion-head domes and Orthodox crosses – a Russian town and a Russian church right in the very heart of the legendary Wild West.

“In late 19th century, before oil rigs covered Oklahoma plains, coal was considered to be the black gold here,” explained to me Tatyana O’Nesky speaking in the Russian language. Tatyana’s father was Russian. Her grandmother and grandfather taught her the native tongue using an old learn-to-read primer that she keeps to this day as a relic. “Mine workers from all over the world, especially Russia, came to the Indian Territory. The people were ready to risk their lives in order to realize their American dream.”

A large group of immigrants from Russia settled in a small town of Hartshorne on land belonging to the Choctaw tribe. Tatyana remembers that her grandmother told her stories about the Russian settlers’ arrival to what would become Oklahoma. The Indians provided the land for the church as a gift – for nominal consideration of only one dollar. By the 1920s, the Russian ethnic community was the second largest group of immigrants in the whole state of Oklahoma, trailing only the Germans. Altogether, there was close to twenty thousand Russian-speaking people in the state. There were more than five hundred Russian families in Hartshorne. At the same time, the Russians were not alone. All told, people of twenty-six nationalities labored at the mines.   

“The people were working together,” says Tatyana’s husband Bill, also a descendant of the Russian immigrants who came to Hartshorne in early XX century. Bill doesn’t speak Russian.

There are very few people today in the town who remember the events of that long-gone era. The world has already forgotten those persistent laborers who fearlessly toiled in dark Oklahoma caverns putting their lives in jeopardy. With the onset of the Great Depression, most Russian immigrants moved away from Oklahoma in search of better living conditions. The community began to fall apart in 1926. The Russians left Hartshorne more than ninety years ago, but the memory of their glory and prosperity continues to live well into the present time – the Russian Hill and the Orthodox church.

As early as 1896, the Russian people longing for the traditions of their lost motherland began conducting church services inside their houses. Until 1916, a wooden structure was enough to accommodate the needs of the community. In 1917, when Bolsheviks in Russia were destroying Orthodox temples, the Russians in Oklahoma set out to build a large brick church, a temple of Cyril and Methodius, the saints who brought Christianity to the Russian people and devised the Glagolitic alphabet.

According to local historians, the temple in Hartshorne was the last Orthodox church, whose construction received the blessing of Emperor Nicolas II. It is also possible that some of the funds for the construction of the Church were provided from the last Tsar’s imperial coffers.  

The old people in town talk about the stories they heard from their parents of the beautiful Russian church ceremonies, lavish celebrations, festivals, card games, and traditional Russian weddings that lasted the entire week.

For many years the church in Hartshorne helped Russian immigrants to adapt to the new realities of living in an unknown country and working in a dangerous occupation. A giant church bell called the parishioners to assemble for Paschal services. The church organized a Russian school. The children of Russian settlers studied there in the evenings. Frequently, priests from the monastery in Pennsylvania and even from Russia itself came to the church.

Unfortunately, mining accidents were frequent at that time. Orthodox priests dressed in ornate clothing escorted funeral processions from the church to the local cemetery. Many headstones at that old cemetery in Hartshorne bear the names of Russian immigrants.   

Despite its spiritual strength and and a two-decade-long period of prosperity, the Russian community could not handle the decline of the mining business and the beginning of the Great Depression.

“When the Depression hit, there was no work here,” Tatyana explained as our conversation progressed. The Russians moved to Ohio to work in the mines there. Others moved to different parts of the country – to California, to Chicago, to Pennsylvania, and to Detroit. The church became empty. Until the 1950s, area residents took care of the grounds and the building.

By the late 1970s, the Hartshorne community experienced a renaissance. After retiring, the people displaced in the Great Depression began returning to the place where they spent their childhood. Many of these descendants of the original Russian settlers still kept property in Hartshorne. The Russian church was reconstructed. The icons were being restored, and priests from other parishes came to conduct services. The parishioners helped in any way they could: some even made candles in their homes. Devine liturgy was conducted every Sunday. Eventually, upon request of the community, an Orthodox priest was assigned to the parish.

Today, father John Nelson is the priest at the Church of St. Cyril and Methodius. He is a former law-enforcement officer from Florida. The Orthodox religion attracted him with its somber beauty, and he changed his Police uniform for a black robe with an Orthodox cross. The members of the congregation, which declined in numbers over the past twenty years, pay him a modest salary every month. Father Nelson lives in a small house right in front of the church.

I asked the priest whether there have been any miracles happening at the Russian church. He gave me a very simple answer “We still continue to have services each Sunday. That is a miracle in and of itself…”