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==Chapel==
Orthodox Christianity was part of the lives of the Russian, Creole, and Aleut colonists. In early 1820s they expressed their intentions to build a [[chapel]] dedicated to St. [[Nicholas of Myra|Nicholas]] at their own expense. The chapel was built within the walls of "Ross Fortress." The Christians of the colony were helped by the officers and crews of three Russian Navy ships in 1823-1824 who donated a considerable sum for the proposed chapel. The chapel was completed in 1825 and was used by the colonists for reader services. (However, the [[Russian Orthodox Church Sites in Alaska Survey]], compiled in the 1970s indicates that a chapel dedicated to St. Helen was constructed already in 1812. Whether this is the same chapel is unknown.)
The chapel was never formally [[consecration of a church|consecrated]] as no clergymen were permanently assigned to it. In later years a few [[priest]]s visited the Ross colony and its chapel. Among these priests was Fr. [[Innocent of Alaska|John Veniaminov]]—later [[Bishop]] Innocent of Alaska, then Metropolitan of Moscow, and [[saint]]—who spent three months in 1836 at the colony. During this time he visited the Spanish missions in the San Francisco area. The missions he visited were San Raphael, San Jose, Santa Clara, and San Francisco. At the time of his visit, Fr. John recorded that of the population of about 260 at Fort Ross, fifteen percent of the local Indian population living and working in the colony were baptized into the Orthodox Christian faith.
*Hector Chevigny, ''Russian America - The Great Alaskan Venture 1741-1867'', The Viking Press, New York, 1965
*[https://www.nps.gov/nhl/find/withdrawn/fortross.htm Fort Ross Chapel] National Park Service page
*[http://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/64000002.pdf National Register of Historic Places survey on Russian Orthodox Churches & Historic Sites in Alaska], (citing Bishop [[Gregory (Afonsky) of Sitka]]'s ''A History of the Orthodox Church in America (1794-1917)'' Kodiak, St. Herman's Theological Seminary, 1977)
==External link==
