"...the founders of the OCA (former Byzantine Rite Catholics)"
I learn something new every day. I never knew this. I thought they were Russians. I do know we in the GOA have a whole diocese of former Byzantine Rite Catholics, Carpatho-Russians.
They were what the "Great Russians" call "Little Russians," that is Carpatho Russians, folks from Minsk and Pinsk. They were under a Latin Rite bishop because there were not that many of them and nobody in the Latin Rite in the late 19th-early 20th century knew exactly what to do with them anyway. They left the Catholic Church under the leadership of a priest named Fr. Alexis Toth after the heavy-handed dealings of the Latin Rite bishop, particularly relating to the matter of clerical celibacy. St. Tikhon's was their first seminary and foundation.