Sitka Lutheran Church

The original church was built and its congregation established through the efforts of Arvid Adolf Etholén, the eighth Russian governor of Alaska.

The land on which the church was constructed was deeded to the congregation in perpetuity by the Russian government at the time of the Alaska Purchase.

It contains many of the furnishings from the original church, including its historic pipe organ and the altarpiece by Berndt Godenhjelm.

In 1839 Arvid Adolf Etholén, himself a Swedish-speaking Finn, was appointed the eighth governor of the colony by which time there were approximately 150 Lutherans working in New Archangel.

[6] The church's pipe organ, made by Ernst Carl Kessler in 1844 and shipped from Estonia to Alaska the next year, was a gift from Governor Etholén.

The first Protestant service in Alaska to be conducted by an American took place in Sitka Lutheran Church on October 13, 1867, five days before the formal handover.

Two years later, William H. Seward who had engineered the Alaska Purchase visited Sitka and gave a lengthy speech in the church on what he saw as the future of the new territory.

With the closure of the Russian-American company, the Finns and Baltic Germans who made up the bulk of the congregation returned to Europe, leaving only a few members.

[10] Sitka's Lutherans continued to worship in private houses with lay preachers, but by 1935 the growing influx of Scandinavian immigrants had much increased the congregation.

In 1999, after years of negotiation, the Russian Orthodox diocese handed back the deed to the Lutheran cemetery which it had appropriated in the late 19th century.