History

Saint Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church of Clarksburg, West Virginia was founded in 1918 by Greek immigrants who had fled war, poverty, religious persecution, and the upheaval of the former Ottoman Empire to seek freedom and opportunity in the mountains of north-central West Virginia. The story of their arrival began in 1907, when John Williams, a supervisor from the Monessen, Pennsylvania steel plant, came to Clarksburg and brought with him two workers, Pete Pantelaras and Harry Cardiges, immigrants from the island of Chios. Their presence made Clarksburg known in the Greek world, and other young men, some with families, soon followed to find employment at the Phillips Sheet and Tinplate Company tin mill in the Summit Park neighborhood, an area that became known as Greek Town for the concentration of Greek families who settled there.

Nicholas Demetriou Daramaras is credited as the founding visionary of Saint Spyridon, though he left Clarksburg before the cornerstone was laid, an honor that fell to John Demetriou Papathanasiou, who bid generously for the privilege. Archimandrite Parthenios Kolonis, a missionary priest from the island of Patmos, had been traveling to Clarksburg from 1910 to 1918 to perform sacraments in people's homes, until the congregation had the means to build their own church. The bricks for the new building were donated by the Weirton Steel Mill from a dismantled oven, and mill employees Andreas Stratakis and Constantinos Andreadis donated their time and skill in woodcarving to design the iconostasis and adorn the interior. The four large icons on the iconostasis were painted by A.M. Antoniadis. The name Saint Spyridon was chosen at the suggestion of Stelios Anastasakis because the feast day of that beloved bishop of Cyprus, December 12, fell just a few days after the church was completed, and the coincidence was understood as providential.

On September 28, 1986, the church was formally consecrated by His Grace Bishop Maximos, with holy relics of early Christian martyrs deposited and sealed within the newly constructed Holy Altar, completing a process of renewal and rededication that the community celebrated as a new beginning. The parish is blessed to possess a pair of the slippers of Saint Spyridon, whose incorrupt relics rest in Corfu and whose footwear is said to wear out yearly from his miraculous travels to help the faithful who pray to him.

Saint Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church in Clarksburg serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of north-central West Virginia, including Bridgeport, Buckhannon, Elkins, Fairmont, Grafton, Parkersburg, and Weston, as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.