Juan de Solis’s 1764 map of St. Augustine.
In December 2017, Michael Francis, a historian and chair of Florida Research on the College of South Florida St. Petersburg, made an unimaginable discovery tucked away within the information of colonial St. Augustine in Spain’s Normal Archive of the Indies. Whereas poring by means of seventeenth century accountings of gunpowder expenditures on the Castillo de San Marcos on his final day of analysis, he discovered that town hosted parades and salutes to rejoice St. Patrick’s Day in 1600 and 1601. The truth is, this can be the primary report of a St. Patrick’s Day parade wherever on this planet.
In keeping with Francis, the Spanish garrison usually expended gunpowder for salutes to assist ships navigate the Matanzas Inlet and through public celebrations. Such celebrations included Easter and the feast days of saints standard within the metropolis, together with the city’s namesake St. Augustine of Hippo (August 28) and St. Barbara (December 4). Unusually, in 1600 and 1601, gunpowder was fired to rejoice the feast day of San Patricio, or St. Patrick, the patron saint of Eire.
The Normal Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, the place Michael Francis discovered the paperwork. Courtesy of Wikimedia.
The impetus for the celebration was most likely Father Ricardo Artur or Arturo, in English Richard Arthur, an Irish Catholic priest who served as parish priest of St. Augustine from 1597 till about 1604. Francis writes that little is understood of Artur, besides that earlier than he entered the priesthood, he was a soldier whose army profession took him to Malta, Italy and Flanders. After he was ordained, he was appointed chaplain of the Castillo de San Juan in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1597, when he was in his early 60s, he was transferred to St. Augustine.
Artur wasn’t the one Irish resident of St. Augustine on the time. Darby Glavin, recognized to the Spanish as David Glavid or Davi Glavi, was a sailor impressed and compelled to serve the British Royal Navy earlier than he escaped to Puerto Rico in 1586. In June 1587, he moved to St. Augustine the place he served as a service provider and soldier. St. Augustine was a various metropolis at the moment, with a inhabitants comprising Timucua and Spanish residents in addition to free and enslaved Africans, Portuguese, Flemings and different Europeans together with a French doctor and a German trumpeter.
The information for 1600 solely point out the expenditure of gunpowder for St. Patrick’s Day; they don’t point out a parade, however the firing of cannons signifies some type of celebration. In 1601, the information present that residents gathered for a procession by means of the streets along with the cannon salutes. Most likely because of Padre Ricardo, San Patricio grew to become a popularly honored saint in St. Augustine and was dubbed the protector of the city’s cornfields.
St. Patrick’s Day parade in St. Augustine in 2019. Courtesy of Go to St. Augustine.
Artur disappears from the historic report after 1604. Given his age, it appears possible he retired or died. After this time, there are not any additional references to St. Patrick or parades in his honor in St. Augustine for hundreds of years. In 1762, New York held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade, inspiring many others. The day has grown as a serious celebration for members of the Irish diaspora ever since. Within the twentieth century, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations returned to St. Augustine and have change into one of many metropolis’s hottest annual occasions.
“It’s tough to not ponder the truth that the primary recorded St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in america didn’t happen in Boston or New York,” Francis wrote in a submit for PBS.org after his discovery. “Slightly, those that first gathered to venerate St. Patrick and course of by means of metropolis streets included a mix of Spaniards, Africans, Native People, Portuguese, a French surgeon, a German fifer, and at the very least two Irishmen, who marched collectively in honor of the Irish saint.”
Article by Invoice Delaney. Initially revealed March 17, 2021. Contact Invoice at wdelaney@moderncities.com.