Colonial St. Patrick's Day
America's Irish Holiday has Protestant and British Roots
Though St. Patrick's Day has become identified with Irish nationalism and Roman Catholic observance, its origins in America were Protestant, and British.
The ritual of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, what later became a manifestation of Irish nationalism and Roman Catholic observance, was actually established in the American colonies by Protestant Irish from Ulster, among whom were British soldiers.
The first St. Patrick’s Day celebration in what would be the future United States was held in Boston, March 17, 1737. This was the same year philosopher George Berkeley, contemporary of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, remarked in his “The Queriest”, a publication devoted to the economic and social improvement of Ireland, “Whose fault is it if Ireland still continues poor?”
At that time, perhaps having had their fill of such earnest, if seemingly only rhetorical, questions, Ulster Presbyterians had emigrated to Boston and New England. They arrived both for the economic opportunity presented in the colonies, (Berkeley himself came to live in Rhode Island for a time, before returning home to Ireland, eventually ordained an Anglican bishop there) as well as religious and political freedom in an era when the Penal Laws affected them along with disenfranchised Roman Catholics. These Ulstermen established the Irish Charitable Society in that year to aide fellow Irish immigrants. It is today the oldest Irish organization in North America.
Their first meeting and dinner to honor St. Patrick was an expression of their Protestant faith as well as their intention to bond with fellow Irish émigrés. Their 1775 meeting included British soldiers of Irish extraction. All proceeded, or marched, to the King’s Chapel to hear a sermon devoted to the occasion, and then continued on to a dinner in King Street.
No meetings by the Irish Charitable Society were held after this meeting in 1775 until 1883, because of the interruption of the Revolutionary War. One may guess on the popularity of British soldiers appearing in American St. Patrick’s Day parades after this event.
British soldiers were still the big show of the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City in 1762. The first celebration in New York City was in 1756, at the Crown and Thistle tavern. Philadelphia held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1771.
General George Washington issued a proclamation during the Revolutionary War, declaring March 17, 1780 a holiday for the Continental Army, then stationed in Morristown, New Jersey, in honor of the many soldiers of Irish ancestry and those born in Ireland. It was reported that this was the first holiday granted the troops in two years. Washington’s remark that the proclamation was “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence,” was possibly the origins of St. Patrick’s Day in America as an expression of Irish nationalism as much as Irish heritage or of honoring a Christian saint.
Within 50 years, Irish emigration to the United States exploded, spurred by the Great Famine in which millions in Ireland starved. The Irish-American resentment against the British, which may have been born during the American War of Independence from that nation, deepened with the anger of the new Irish immigrants, predominantly Roman Catholic, who celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in their new country with more freedom and certainly more fervor than they did in Ireland.
Today, there are 33.7 million Americans of Irish ancestry, Catholic and Protestant together, nine times the population of Ireland at 3.8 million.
Sources:
Cronin, Mike and Daryl Adair, “The Wearing of the Green: A History of St. Patrick’s Day” (NY: Routledge) 2002.
The Charitable Irish Society website: http://www.charitableirishsociety.org
The People’s Chronology website: http://www.enotes.com/peoples-chronology/year-1737/literature
United States Government websites: http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2006/Mar/08-537998.html and http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03ff04.html
Irish American Cultural Institute website: http://www.iaci-usa.org/washington.html
