“I’ve gotten used to the quiet. Don’t need women.” The inspector laughed. Once, in 1967, they almost got caught.
Tom Evers, Mike’s old friend, came looking for him. Wanted to see him. He stumbled on the skete by accident.
He saw two cabins, children playing, women moving about. Mike came out to meet him. Tom stared. “Mike, what is all this? You started a whole family out here?”
Mike nodded. “I did. Old Believer women. I live with them.” Tom narrowed his eyes. “How many women?”
“Four.” Tom gave a low whistle. “And kids?” “Fifteen.”
Tom sat down on a stump. “Mike, you know that’s illegal. Polygamy’s against the law.”
Mike nodded. “I know. But you won’t turn me in, will you?” Tom was quiet a moment, then shook his head.
“No. I won’t. You’re my friend. But be careful. If they find out, it’s over.”
Tom left and told no one. Mike breathed easier. By the 1970s the skete had become a community of twenty.
The older children had grown and were helping. Panteleimon, thirteen, hunted with his father. Ann, twelve, wove like a grown woman.
Martha, eleven, cooked. Samuel, ten, chopped wood. Mike looked at them and thought:
There it is. Continuation. The line. Not dead. Alive and growing.
His children would carry it on. There would be grandchildren, great-grandchildren. The community would not die.
Phoebe was glad too. She told Mike, “You see? God didn’t leave us. We prayed, and He sent you.”
“You saved our line, Mike. You’re our rescuer.” Mike waved that off. “I’m no rescuer. Just a man.”
“I only did what needed doing.” But inside, he was proud. He, a former drunk, a divorced failure, had built a family.
A large, strong, happy one. Fathered fifteen children. Brought a community back to life. That was more than just getting by. That was something.
Years passed. The 1970s. The 1980s. Mike grew old.
The children grew up. The older ones married, sometimes within the extended community. Children were born. By 1985 Mike had twelve grandchildren.
The community had grown to thirty-five people. They built two more cabins and a small chapel. Mike had become a kind of patriarch.
Everyone listened to him and respected him. Phoebe, the eldest wife, was like an abbess of the place. People went to her for counsel.
Mike died in 1995 at the age of seventy-six. Quietly, in his sleep, on the stove-bench, just as he would have wanted. They buried him in the woods, in the skete cemetery, beside Elder Panteleimon and the old mothers.
Phoebe, Agatha, Nancy, and Dora stood at the grave and cried. So did the children and grandchildren. Phoebe laid a hand on the cross and said, “Thank you, Mike. You gave us life.”
“Our line lives because of you. May you rest in peace.” Phoebe died in 1998, at sixty-seven.
Agatha in 2000, at seventy. Nancy in 2003, at sixty-eight. Dora lived until 2010 and died at seventy-two.
All were buried beside Mike. By the 2010s the community numbered eighty people—children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Mike. All Old Believers, living in the woods by the old ways. The civil authorities knew, but left them alone. Too remote. Too peaceful.
From time to time journalists and photographers came out and did stories on the Old Believer community in the woods, descendants of one man. Mike’s grandchildren told their grandfather’s story. How he found four young women, saved them, fathered fifteen children, and restored the community.
People were surprised. Some disapproved. Some admired. But the grandchildren said simply, “Granddad did what needed doing. He saved a line. It was the right thing.” This story took place in our country in the late 1950s.
Those were hard years for religious people. The state went after churches, broke up sketes, arrested clergy. Old Believers suffered especially. They were treated as enemies of the secular order.
The anti-religious campaign of 1954–1958 closed thousands of churches, hundreds of monasteries, and dozens of Old Believer communities. The relevant criminal statute for violating laws on the separation of church and state carried up to three years in prison. Clergy, lay leaders, and teachers in religious schools could all be charged under it.
The fathers of the four women in this story were arrested under that very statute in 1955. Samuel Ustin, Simon Safin, Theodore Fisher, Peter Yermak. All received five years in northern labor camps.
Three died in custody from exhaustion and illness. Only Peter Yermak lived to see the 1960 amnesty. He came out broken.
He died in 1962, not yet fifty. But even in those years, there were people who chose conscience over law. Mike Cornell was one of them.
He knew polygamy was illegal. The criminal code provided up to two years for it. But he couldn’t walk away from four women dying out there alone.
Women asking for help. For a chance to continue their line and preserve the faith of their ancestors. He chose to help. He became their husband, protector, provider.
He fathered children with them, rebuilt the community, and created a family unlike any other around. Four wives, fifteen children, dozens of grandchildren, hundreds of descendants. A large, strong, close family.
Phoebe, Agatha, Nancy, and Dora made a choice too. They could have left the skete after the elders died in 1956 and 1957. They could have gone into the world, found husbands, taken jobs in towns, lived ordinary secular lives.
But they stayed. They kept their ancestors’ faith. They took the extraordinary step of asking a stranger to marry all four of them.
And they found a man who accepted all of them, without picking one over the others. Their story is about love being stronger than law, and faith stronger than persecution. About family not always fitting the form prescribed by the state or by official religion.
It is people who love one another, raise children, and live in peace. People who share joys and burdens and stand by one another in hard times. You can judge Mike.
Polygamy is a sin under the canons of the historic Christian Church, established long ago by church councils. But Old Believers often read Scripture through their own lens. They pointed to the Old Testament, where patriarchs had multiple wives.
Abraham had Sarah and Hagar. Jacob had Leah, Rachel, and two concubines. King David had seven wives. Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.
And God did not strike them down. More than that, He blessed them with descendants. Phoebe, being well-read and intelligent, knew those examples. When Mike hesitated, she told him, “Scripture says be fruitful and multiply.”
“We are doing God’s will. We are saving a line. That matters.” You can argue with that logic.
But you can’t argue with the outcome. The community survived. The line continued…
