AEMI

MARIA JARLSDOTTER ENCKELL
years, often quite aggressively so by the
Russian American Company itself or its
many agents, in the pursuit of satisfying
the Company’s ever ongoing need for
capable professional men competent in
various fields desired.
It is ironic that today Sitka’s two Russian
era churches, both new: the orthodox
one a faithful replica of the old from
1848, the older Lutheran from 1840, by
political manipulation condemned to
be torn down in 1888 (later replaced
by a string of less enticing modern
ones, lacking both patina and soul), still
stand on their original Russian Era lots
so close to each other that anyone who
so will chose can spit from the steps of
one and have it land on the steps of the
other. The former is glorified beyond
imagination as the epitome of Alaska’s
Russian Era, the other one; historically
at least equally significant to that era
is still ignored by the blindness of the
modern era’s eminent historians. So, if
Alaska’s Russian Era historians do continue
to avoid recognizing that Alaska’s
Russian Era had two equally significant
parallel white communities, that of the
Orthodox and the Lutheran, representing
the cultures of the Orthodox East
and the Lutheran West with their two
markedly different outlooks on life, cultures,
traditions, values, education, and
structures of society, then Alaska’s Russian
Era history research will go on its
merry way, hobbling slowly along, dragging
one of its two legs; that other one
ignored, unused, turned invisable and
lame, yet never buried under 10 feet of
soil.
The next point is a message:
Please help, as I don’t have access to those
much needed tools I have used and still
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use in my search for Finlanders in Russian
America, such as church records,
passport records, in- and out-moving
parish records, newspaper notices, birth
announcements, obituaries and the like,
as I’m unable to do the same for all the
really many Lutherans from Estland,
Lifland and Kurland, the Russian-America
Company had recruited for its many
North Pacific operating sites. I hope and
pray such research will pick the interest
of some historian(s), as without history
we stand naked without a past to look
back at, without it we stand without
reference points to who and what we
are, and what we stand for. If we lack
reference points we have no identity to
call our own. And, if we don’t value and
hold on to our past someone else will
grab hold of our past history, to then
boldly proclaim it-all as their very own.
Further work is required using the
same methodology and type of records
as employed here for the many Lutherans
from Estland, Lifland and Kurland,
whom the Russian-America company
recruited for its many North Pacific operating
sites. This article will have been
worthwhile if were to stimulate such
work.