Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Danielson

History

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Danielson, Connecticut was founded in June 1916, when 25 families assembled to appoint the first Board of Trustees: George Berris, Peter Senopoulos, Gus Atsales, and Chris Haveles. The earliest Greek immigrants to northeastern Connecticut came from the Gortina area of the Peloponnese and found employment at the Quinebaug Mills and the Taunton Mills Company, whose textile operations drew workers to the small borough of Danielson in Windham County. The State of Connecticut granted the Greek Orthodox Community of Danielson its incorporation papers on December 31, 1916. The first Divine Liturgy was celebrated in August 1916 in a storefront at 43½ Elm Street in East Brooklyn.

In the spring of 1917, the Danielson Greek community purchased property on Water Street from the Taunton Mills Company, demolished the mill tenements that stood there, and began construction of their own church. The houses were moved across Cottage Street and placed adjacent to the new church building, where they provided income and a rectory for the church treasury for many years. The church building, erected in 1918, served the community for nearly half a century before a major renovation was commenced in 1964, with iconography completed by John Papaspiliopoulos, a student of the celebrated Byzantine iconographer Photis Contoglou. The building was formally consecrated in 1965.

The parish holds a place of particular distinction in the history of American Orthodoxy through its proximity to the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary in nearby Pomfret, which from 1934 to 1948 trained the first American-born Greek Orthodox priests. Holy Trinity served as the nearest parish to the seminary, and the families of Danielson hosted seminarians and faculty on Sundays and holy days throughout those years. Among the most notable visitors were the future Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras and the future Archbishop Iakovos of America, both of whom served on the seminary staff at Pomfret. The seminary choir frequently chanted the Divine Liturgy at Holy Trinity, and the bond between the small Danielson parish and the formation of American Orthodox clergy left a permanent mark on the community's identity.

In August 1941, representatives from twenty-five communities throughout New England gathered at Holy Trinity to establish the Hellenic Orthodox Youth Organization, the predecessor to GOYA, making the Danielson church a birthplace of organized Greek Orthodox youth ministry in America.

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church at 80 Water Street in Danielson serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Windham County and surrounding communities of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.