{"id":26634,"date":"2015-03-13T14:36:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T18:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=26634"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:25:48","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T19:25:48","slug":"cincinnatis-st-patricks-day-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2015\/03\/cincinnatis-st-patricks-day-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"Cincinnati\u2019s St. Patrick\u2019s Day Parade"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Bagpiper\"<\/a>On Tuesday, March 17, the world will recognize St. Patrick\u2019s Day for the Irish and Irish descendants with various celebrations and events, but this weekend will feature the many parades devoted to the day.\u00a0 Dublin, New York, Savannah, Chicago, Sydney, Butte, New Orleans, and, Cincinnati all have community parades, and studying how these parades are historically manifested reveals a great deal about urban culture \u2013 the elements of religion, ethnicity, enfranchisement, inclusion, social mores, and political influence.\u00a0 The day was first celebrated in America in Boston in 1737.<\/p>\n

Here in Cincinnati, the initial St. Patrick\u2019s Day parades were staged in the \"Purcell\"<\/a>1840s and they were based upon the Irish and Irish American attempts to promote temperance.\u00a0 As the local Catholic diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Telegraph, <\/em>effused in 1843, the parade identified the marchers as \u201cdefenders of the great cause\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Temperance parades, of course, were fairly common beyond the holiday of St. Patrick, prompting a remark from Charles Dickens when he visited Cincinnati as part of his 1842 lecture tour of America.\u00a0 Dickens witnessed one local parade that celebrated the Irish temperance priest, Theobald Mathew: \u201cI was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a distinct society among themselves, and mustered very strong with their green scarfs carrying their national harp and portrait of Father Mathew held high about the people\u2019s heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a><\/p>\n

It was the local branches of the Ancient Order of Hibernians that later organized many of the early St. Patrick\u2019s Day parades in Cincinnati, a tradition continued today along with the local chapter of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.\u00a0 The AOH American version was formed in 1836 as a Christian charity devoted to preserving Irish culture in the United States, and much of the effort was \"081-a\"<\/a>directed to maintaining an ethnic unity in the face of cultural assimilation.\u00a0 The Hibernians made their first official appearance in a Cincinnati St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade in 1869 when Archbishop John Purcell blessed their marching banners.<\/p>\n

After this, the parade became more military-oriented than temperance based, in large part to honor the veterans of the Civil War.\u00a0 But there was another aspect to it as well.\u00a0 And, after the war, there was the growing Fenian movement.\u00a0 Many Irish fought in the Civil War, primarily on the Union side, but there were a fair number on the Confederate side as well.\u00a0 Thus, with military training and a continuing desire to overcome English rule in Ireland, many Irish veterans joined the American branch of the Fenians, a nationalist organization that sought to oust the British by force.\u00a0 In 1866 the American Fenians, with many leaders from Cincinnati, launched a raid near the Niagara River in Canada, believing if the English were forced to put down a revolt in Canada, a rebellion could easily be mounted in Ireland.\u00a0 The Canadian invasion was a complete failure as the Fenian forces were thwarted and 85 Cincinnati Irishmen were taken prisoner.\u00a0 A revolt in Ireland the next year failed as well.<\/p>\n

\"Hiberians\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, the Fenians still put on a show during Cincinnati\u2019s parades.\u00a0 An Irish immigrant, Civil War veteran, Fenian, and Irish Nationalist by the name of George Sweeny noted of one St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade in the 1870s, \u201cThe Fenians \"St.<\/a>mustered at their armory in the early morning, attracting the attention of the public in their neat uniforms, which consisted of a blue zoave jacket and pants trimmed with green.\u201d\u00a0 Along a very long parade route, military and civic groups marched past St. Peter in Chains Cathedral, Cincinnati City Hall, and the buildings of downtown Cincinnati before crossing the Ohio River to Covington and Newport before re-crossing the river to Cincinnati.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the 20th<\/sup> century, the parade had good years and bad in terms of interest and attendance.\u00a0 As the decades passed, the notion of a St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade in Cincinnati dissipated to nothing.\u00a0 But the Hibernians came through.\u00a0 The Saint Patrick Division No. 1 of Cincinnati\u2019s AOH decided to revive the parade.\u00a0 Under the leadership of men like Tom O\u2019Brien, R. Murray Fogarty, and big Jim Murphy, the parade was restarted in 1967.\u00a0 And with that rebirth came the beginnings of the traditions celebrated \"waving\"<\/a>today in the city. \u00a0Beginning in 1970, it became the custom for the Hibernians to \u201csteal\u201d St. Patrick in the weeks leading up to the parade.\u00a0 In Mt. Adams, traditionally an Irish and German neighborhood, there were two separate Catholic churches, one for each ethnicity.\u00a0 By the mid-1960s both congregations were in decline as Cincinnati neighborhood demographics changed, and the Irish\u2019s Holy Cross Church was administratively merged with the Germans\u2019 Immaculata Church.\u00a0 In 1970, Holy Cross was closed completely.\u00a0 Jim Crowley of Crowley\u2019s Tavern in Mt. Adams asked Father Wilfrid Flanery to place the Irish church\u2019s St. Patrick statue in the German church so the Irish parishioners would feel they were welcome.\u00a0 For whatever reason, the move could not be made official so the doors to the church were conveniently left unlocked one night.\u00a0 On March 15, a group of Irish congregants seized the statue and crept into the church to \u201chide\u201d it there.<\/p>\n

\"Hiberians<\/a><\/p>\n

This tradition itself is now marked with pomp and ceremony every year on the \"balloon\"<\/a>third Sunday in February.\u00a0 At the two o\u2019clock Mass, the statue is in front of the pews.\u00a0 The Ancient Order of Hibernians is there, clad with green sashes, and the Emerald Society, the pipe and drum corps, attends as well.\u00a0 The pipes and drums lead a procession out to the streets of Mt. Adams, followed by the Hibernians hoisting the statue in a pickup truck and surrounding it in victory for another successful mission.\u00a0 Then everyone adjourns to Crowley\u2019s Pub.\u00a0 But there is another twist to the event.\u00a0 The statue that is taken from the church every year is an old one, donated by a James Healy in the 1920s.\u00a0 That particular one is carefully stored somewhere and the statue that miraculously appears with the Hibernians in the parade is one that was originally in Cincinnati\u2019s St. Patrick\u2019s Church.<\/p>\n

\"Costume\"<\/a>And even today, there are civic issues that surround a parade that marks both ethnic and community pride: what the parade route will be, will it go past Fountain Square, what organization funds the parade, how will beer sales and souvenirs be regulated, which particular groups are permitted to march, and which ones might be denied.\u00a0\u00a0 St. Patrick\u2019s Day is also big business in America and huge for tourism. In 2012, for instance, Americans spent $4.5 billion on St. Patrick\u2019s Day, with the brewing industry earning $245 million of that figure, accounting for 1% of their annual sales.\u00a0 Worldwide, 13 million pints of Guinness Ale are consumed, with over 3 million of those in the United States.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the only aspect that cannot be discussed and controlled is the weather.\u00a0 For some years, Cincinnati\u2019s St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade has been marked by warm, sunny weather and other times it has fallen victim to sleet, snow, and rain.\u00a0 But without fail, St. Patrick always rides on his float.\"Crowleys\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To learn more about the Urban Studies Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library, please contact us at archives@ucmail.uc.edu<\/a>, call us at 513.556.1959, go to our website at: http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/arb.htmlease<\/a>, or find us on Facebook at https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ArchivesRareBooksLibraryUniversityOfCincinnati<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: \u00a0Kevin Grace On Tuesday, March 17, the world will recognize St. Patrick\u2019s Day for the Irish and Irish descendants with various celebrations and events, but this weekend will feature the many parades devoted to the day.\u00a0 Dublin, New York, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[53,327,58],"class_list":["post-26634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-cincinnati-history","tag-irish-in-southwest-ohio","tag-urban-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}