Beginning in the 1880s, tens of thousands of Rusyns from the Carpathian Mountains flocked to Pittsburgh to work in its steel industry, especially Andrew Carnegie's large steel mill at Homestead, Pennsylvania. In 1894—two years after the infamous and bloody Homestead Strike—the large Rusyn community of Homestead met to discuss the formation of a church. In January 1897 the new church was officially chartered and dedicated as St. John the Baptist Greek Catholic Church.