Saint Helena: Russia in the Carolina Pines

The church standing here tells a story few people expect to find in coastal North Carolina. Saint Helena began in the early twentieth century as a planned agricultural colony. That experiment did not take hold, and through the nineteen twenties a new wave of settlers arrived: Russians and Ukrainians fleeing revolution and upheaval in the old world.

In time their community was established enough that, led by their priest, they built this house of worship in the traditional Byzantine style, the domes and arches of Eastern Orthodox Christianity rising quietly among the longleaf pines of Pender County. It stands as one of the more unlikely ethnic landmarks on the Carolina coast, a reminder that the early twentieth century moved people from many directions, not just one.