Fifteen children grew up in faith, work, and love. All became decent, honest, hardworking people. Panteleimon, the oldest son, became a hunter like his father.
He married a girl from a neighboring Old Believer community they found in the 1970s. They had five children. Ann, the oldest daughter, married Simon, her brother.
That was permitted in their community in times of necessity, to keep the line from mixing with outsiders. She had four children. Samuel became a beekeeper.
He expanded the apiary to fifty hives. He married his sister Martha. They had six children.
All fifteen of Mike’s children married and had children. By 1985 Mike had forty-seven grandchildren. By 1995, when he died, he had twelve great-grandchildren.
By 2010, when the last of the four wives, Dora, died, the community numbered eighty people. A large family living in the woods by old ways, far from modern life. They are not against progress. They use chainsaws, radios, and solar panels for electricity, but they live traditionally.
They pray, wear traditional clothing, keep the fasts. They don’t eat rich foods on certain days, don’t smoke, don’t drink. The civil authorities know about the community, but leave it alone.
Too remote. Too peaceful. In the 1990s, after the old state collapsed and religion was no longer persecuted, the community registered officially. Old Believer Community of the Pomorian Tradition in the name of Elder Panteleimon.
They received land on a long-term lease, documents for the cabins, and the right to farm. Sometimes journalists, researchers, and photographers come out. They do stories.
An Old Believer community in the deep northern woods, descendants of one man and four wives. Mike’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren tell the story of their grandfather. How he found four young women in 1958, how they asked him to become husband to all of them.
How he agreed, accepted their faith, fathered fifteen children, and restored the community. People are surprised. Some condemn it. Some admire it.
Some say it was sinful, that polygamy is forbidden. Some say it was heroic, that he saved a line. Some call it sectarian and dangerous. Some call it freedom, people living as they choose.
But Mike’s descendants put it simply. Granddad did what needed doing. He saved a line, loved four women, raised children, taught faith, work, and honesty.
It was right. We are alive because of him. The community has a museum.
A small room in the old cabin where Mike lived. They keep his things there. His hunting rifle, his pipe, the old religious books he read.
A homespun shirt Agatha sewed. The copper cross Phoebe placed on him at his baptism in 1958. The cradles he carved for the first four children.
On the wall hangs a photograph. Rare. The only one. Taken in 1980, when an ethnographer from a big city came to study the Old Believers and asked permission to photograph them.
The community doesn’t like being photographed. They take the commandment seriously.
But they agreed once. Just once. In the photograph Mike is 61, gray-haired, bearded.
Beside him are his four wives. Phoebe, 49, stern, in a dark headscarf. Agatha, 47, in a white scarf, with a quiet smile.
Nancy, 45, rosy and cheerful. Dora, 42, the youngest, with curious eyes. Around them are children and grandchildren, all in traditional dress.
The men in long shirts, the women in dresses and scarves. A large family. A happy family.
You can see it in their faces. They show that photograph to visitors and tell the story.
“That’s our great-grandfather Mike. Those are our great-grandmothers Phoebe, Agatha, Nancy, and Dora. They built this community.”
“We are their descendants. We remember.” Mike Cornell lived a long life.
Seventy-six years. He saw children grow, grandchildren born, the community strengthen. He worked to the end.
At seventy-five he still went trapping, still checked his lines. He used to say, “As long as my legs work, I’ll work.” “God gave me strength. Best use it.”…
