Armenian church registers and the reconstruction of immigrant lives in America

Editor’s note: This article appeared in the Armenian Weekly’s March 2026 special magazine issue, “America at 250: An Armenian American Retrospective,” guest edited by former Weekly editor Dr. Khatchig Mouradian and dedicated to the 250th anniversary of Declaration of Independence and the history of Armenian American life. 

On Jan. 18, 1891, the Armenian Church of Our Saviour in Worcester, Massachusetts, was consecrated, marking the establishment of the first Armenian church in the Americas. The effort to found a parish had begun several years earlier, in 1888, with the formation of an Armenian Club that met at Temperance Hall. The following year, Rev. Fr. Hovsep Sarajian arrived in Worcester under the auspices of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople. Soon thereafter, a Protestant Armenian congregation was organized in Worcester, later known as the Armenian Church of the Martyrs. In the more than a century since, the Armenian population in the United States — and the number of its places of worship — has grown significantly.