History

Holy Trinity-Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church of Cincinnati, Ohio holds the distinction of being the oldest Greek Orthodox parish on record in the State of Ohio, its roots stretching back to the very first wave of Greek immigration to America. Several Greeks had come to Cincinnati as early as the 1840s, when the city was the nation's sixth largest and a thriving industrial center on the Ohio River. Among the most notable nineteenth-century Greeks in Cincinnati was Professor John N. Zachos, who collaborated with the famed educator Horace Mann to establish Antioch College in Yellow Springs. By the period between 1880 and 1900 the Greek community of Cincinnati had grown substantially, and many of the founding families of what would become the parish arrived during those years.

In 1907 the Reverend Nathaniel Sideris, hearing that there were a number of Greeks in Cincinnati, arrived by steamboat from New Orleans and organized the first Greek Orthodox parish in the State of Ohio, the original Holy Trinity Church. Father Sideris served as the first permanent resident priest before leaving in 1908, after which he traveled to Detroit, where he established the first Greek Orthodox church in that city. The Cincinnati parish experienced considerable turmoil in its early years, as the volatile temperament of the Greek immigrant community, combined with political divisions between royalists and Venizelists, and then the devastating financial strain of the Great Depression, tested the parish severely.

In 1938, the political and communal divisions that had long troubled the Cincinnati Greek community crystallized into a formal schism, and a second Greek Orthodox church, Saint Nicholas, was organized in the city. The two communities maintained separate existences for seven years before recognizing that their strength lay in unity. In 1945 Holy Trinity and Saint Nicholas merged into a single parish, combining their histories and their memberships under the unified name that the community has carried ever since.

In December 1972 the merged community celebrated the opening of its new church at 7000 Winton Road in Finneytown, a northern suburb of Cincinnati, with the first Divine Liturgy celebrated on December 16 of that year. The congregation has grown to approximately 2,000 faithful, drawing Greek Americans alongside families of Arabic, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Slavic backgrounds and a growing number of converts, a reflection of the universal character of the ancient faith in one of Ohio's great river cities. The parish hosts an annual June Panegyri Greek Festival that has become a beloved tradition in the Cincinnati community.

Holy Trinity-Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at 7000 Winton Road in Cincinnati serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the greater Cincinnati area as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Detroit within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the oldest Greek Orthodox parish in Ohio and a community that has endured for more than a century through faith, hardship, division, and reunion.