American-Lemko History

The Lemkos of southeast Poland first began migrating to Coal Country in northeast Pennsylvania in the 1870’s in search of a better life.  What they often found there was grinding poverty even more difficult than what they experienced back home and the hardened attitudes of the local people who considered them little more than beasts of burden to help carry…

Most of you have heard of the Ukrainian National Association, (the UNA). After all, it operates Soyuzivka; it publishes the Ukrainian language newspaper “Svoboda” and the English language “The Ukrainian Weekly”. However, what is it, and what does it have to do with the Lemkos? The Ukrainian National Association remains, 113 years after its establishment…

by Dr. Myron B. Kuropas Prior to 1914, few emigres from Ukraine called themselves “Ukrainians.” During the first 20 years of immigration, they generally identified with a particular region in Ukraine, calling themselves “Lemkos,” “Boykos” and “Hutsuls.” By about the mid-1890s, however, most of the older immigrants had come to call themselves “UhroRusyns” (Hungarian Rusyns)…