View source for St. Andrew Church (Killisnoo, Alaska)

[[File:Killisnoochurch.jpg|right|thumb|px200|St. Andrew Church, Killisnoo, Alaska]]
St. Andrew Church was a church located in Killisnoo, Alaska that was founded by the Russian Orthodox Church as they evangelized Alaska.  In 1928, the church, along with most of the village, burned down, and most of the residents decided to relocate to other villages.  As a result, rather than rebuilding St. Andrew, a new church, [[St._John_the_Baptist_Church (Angoon,_Alaska)|St. John the Baptist]], was built in the nearby village of Angoon.

==History==

The village of Killisnoo, Alaska was established around 1881 because a company set up a fish processing plant nearby, and many members of the Hutsnuwu tribe of Tlingit Indians moved there from surrounding villages in order to work there.  The establishment of a church soon followed in order to minister to the Tlingit people. This church was named in honor of [[Apostle_Andrew|Apostle Andrew, the First-Called]].  The parish eventually received its own priest.  Their second priest, Fr. Iosif Levin, presided over a disastrous tenure there, due in large part to his personality and disdain for the Tlingits.  He was removed, but it took some time for a replacement to be assigned, giving the local Protestant Church, led by a Rev. Jones, to get more of a foothold in the local religious landscape.  The priest sent to replace Fr. Levin was Fr. Ioann Soboleff, who was a very dedicated priest who loved the Tlingit people.   

There are a fair number of pictures taken of St. Andrew Church while it still stood because Fr. Ioann Soboleff's son Vincent, born in 1882, became the owner of a Kodak camera and took hundreds of pictures of Killisnoo, its people, and the surrounding areas. These pictures date from from the 1890s through the late 1910s.  Many of these are available today through the Alaska Digital Archives website.

St. Andrew was destroyed by fire in 1928, along with most of the town.  As the town did not rebuild, neither was St. Andrew.  Instead, a successor parish, St. John the Baptist, was built in Angoon instead.  The bells from St. Andrew were installed in the new St. John the Baptist Church in 1930.

==Clergy==
*Monk Anton Gumovskii (1888-1889) - Whether Monk Anton was a full deacon or only a Psalm Reader is unknown.
*Igumen Georgii Chudnovskii (1889)
*Hieromonk [[Iosif Levin]] (1890)
*Fr. [[Andrew Kashevaroff]] (1893-1894), prior to ordination in the capacity of Psalm Reader and teacher.
*Fr. [[Ioann Soboleff]] (1893-1908)
*Fr. Pavel Chubaroff (1909-1911?)
*Hieromonk [[Peter Zaichenko]] (1911-1912 or 1913)

==Sources==
*[http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/80004589.pdf United States Department of the Interior National Park Service Historical Site Nomination documentation for St. John the Baptist and other Alaskan churches]
*[http://www.stnicholasjuneau.org/files/tlingit/clerical-news.pdf Alaskan Clerical News, 1917]
*[http://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=gnispq:3:0::NO::P3_FID:1423064 US Geolological Survey Place Name information]
*[http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm/search/field/creato/searchterm/Soboleff,%20Vincent%20I./mode/exact Collection of Vincent Soboleff photos at Alaska's Digital Archives]
*[http://orthodoxhistory.org/2010/04/21/orthodoxy-in-alaska-after-1885-and-protestant-missionaries/ Orthodoxy in Alaska after 1885 and Protestant Missionaries] Fr. Oliver Herbel, OrthodoxHistory.org site
*[http://sspeterpaulaz.org/June%202012%20%20Newsletter.pdf On the Life of Hieromonk Peter Zaichenko] Ss. Peter and Paul Church, Phoenix, Arizona

==External Links==
*[http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm/search/searchterm/killisnoo!church/field/all!all/mode/all!all/conn/and!and/order/nosort/ad/asc Alaska Digital Archives, search results for "Killisnoo" and "church"]
*[http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/a-russian-american-photographing-native-alaska/ A Russian American Photographing Native Alaska] article from the <i>New York Times</i>

==Books==
*''[http://www.oupress.com/ECommerce/Book/Detail/1738/a%20russian%20american%20photographer%20in%20tlingit%20country A Russian American Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska]'' by Sergei Kan, University of Oklahoma Press 2013, hardcover, 271 pages, 137 black and white photographs of people and scenes in Killisnoo and southeastern Alaska taken circa 1910, ISBN 9780806142906

*Kan, Sergei. ''Memory Eternal Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries.'' University of Washington Press. 1999.

[[Category:Churches|Andrew]]
[[Category:USA Churches|Andrew]]
[[Category:Alaska Churches|Andrew]]
[[Category:Defunct Churches|Andrew]]