Four major groups of Eastern Orthodox Christians from the former Ottoman Empire settled in Worcester, the second-largest city in New England, over the past century. Greek, Albanian, and Romanians from Epirus in what is now southern Albania and northern Greece came to Worcester and faced challenges beyond settlement in a new country based on issues of self-identity stemming from their time in the "old country" as well as political issues facing the respective diasporas. These challenges compare and contrast with the experience of those facing another Eastern Orthodox immigrant group in Worcester, the Greek Orthodox from the former Ottoman district of Mount Lebanon. Each group established its own church in Worcester as a place of worship but also as a social gathering center and a vessel through which to promote and preserve cultural traditions. All four group dealt with political issues based on their existence as minorities in the Ottoman Empire. The settlers from Epirus often chose to identify as members of an ethnic group different than that which they claimed overseas, while Lebanese immigrants, unlike the others, were early pioneers in replacing their ethnic liturgical language with English. More recent immigration of Orthodox Christians from other parts of Albania as well as Greek whose origins are in Asia Minor have presented new challenges to the Worcester Eastern Orthodox communities. Why did members of the same family often claim different ethnic identities? Why do the languages of these groups here range from flourishing to dying to forgotten? Research into these and other issues has been minimal due in part to relative lack of communication among the different groups as well the specter of mutual family histories and feuds looming in the background. I hope to initiate a gathering of information on the history of each community here and overseas, document their experiences, and place them in the greater context of Eastern Christian minority immigration to the United States.

The retention of ethnic identity and cultural practices among stateless people, like the Assyrians, is certainly a lacuna in academia. Most research done on the Assyrians is more-or-less limited to the ancient world or the Christian period based o Syriac liturgical culture. The study of the material culture of the Assyrians of Harput, Turkey who settled in Massachusetts shows a distinct method(s) of identity preservation and transmission to subsequent generations of Assyrians and non-Assyrians as well as a plethora of intellectual and philosophical development, especially in regard to personal and group identity structures. It is this transplanted identity, both grassroots and elite, and its conflict with its own church, that leads to a further debate of the legitimacy of religious institutions which, in the case of the Syrian Orthodox Assyrians, played a pivotal role in cultural and identity retention. The early immigrants formed a number of organizations and institutions which bolstered social capital and facilitated communal networks and cultural development. This meant shifting from an exclusively Christian denominational affiliation to the more secular ‘nationalistic’ approach, which broke the bonds of ecclesiastical animosity, fostered in part by the millet system, where Christian and Jewish communities were governed through their religious institutions. Materials gathered in conversation with first and second generation Diaspora families, visits to cemeteries, and investigations of individual books and newspapers from the early period of Assyrian emigration to Massachusetts, will be utilized to show the growing divide between Assyrian religious and secular institutions in Massachusetts. The periodicals surveyed will include, Lichono d’Omtho (The Nation's Voice) recently microfilmed by Harvard University, the personal memoirs of Sennharib Balley of Diarbekir, and the archives of the United Assyrian Association of Massachusetts. These secular writings will be juxtaposed with the correspondence between the Syrian Orthodox archbishop in New Jersey, Mor Ignatius Yeshu Samuel, and that of the committee of St Mary’s Assyrian Apostolic Church of Worcester, Massachusetts. Through this research I hope to illustrate the pattern of secularization of Middle Eastern Christian minorities in United States in the early 20th century, and the Church’s response to a dwindling congregation.

In their collecting activities on the Middle East research libraries have largely ignored minority communities in the Middle East and their corresponding émigré communities. The Assyrian community is such a case in point. For over 100 years a variety of publications have emanated from the Assyrian Middle Eastern communities and the diaspora. With the advent of the internet and easy access to personal publishing a number of new books, journals, and non-print media in languages used by the community—Arabic, English, Neo-Aramaic, and Turkish—have appeared. At the same time, as the diaspora ages much older material is being lost because subsequent generations are no longer interested in materials in languages that they can no longer read or are unsure what to do with such material. What are the obstacles a research institution faces in documenting the Assyrian community? How does documenting the Assyrian community’s historicities create new avenues of research for scholars in the field? The experience of the Middle Eastern Division, Harvard College Library, in documenting this community over the past ten years addresses these questions.