While St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated by Irish-Americans throughout the United States, its significance in Boston has made it one of the biggest local holidays of the year. How did St. Patrick’s Day become such a huge event, and why does it mean so much to the people of Massachusetts?
St. Patrick’s Day is traditionally a Catholic feast day that honors Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Celebrated on his supposed death day, Saint Patrick was a Romano-British missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century. His official feast day was placed on March 17th on the Catholic Liturgical Calendar in the 17th century and became a public holiday in Ireland in 1903.
Irish colonists have been present since the earliest days of Massachusetts Bay Colony, often arriving as indentured servants who were largely Protestant rather than Catholic. The early Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies were not welcoming places for Irish immigrants, where the Anglo-Saxon majority saw them as “members of a barbaric, inferior, and unmanageable race” (O’Connor, page 5). Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1600’s preferred to go to more hospitable colonies such as Maryland and Pennsylvania, as Massachusetts Bay had banned Catholic priests from living in the colony repeatedly and Irish Catholics in Boston were obliged to hide their religious identity. By the 1700’s the religious restrictions in Massachusetts had considerably eased (though certainly not disappeared), and more Irish Protestants found a home in and around Massachusetts, even founding towns such as Bangor and Belfast in what is now Maine.
Despite early resentment, the first observance of St. Patrick’s Day in the original thirteen colonies took place – you guessed it – in Boston in 1737. Prominent Irish Protestants chose the patron saint’s feast day to found the Charitable Irish Society, the oldest Irish society in the Americas. The Society was and continues to be dedicated to the assistance of Irish immigrants in the Boston area, though the Irish were still very much a minority in colonial Massachusetts.
This would change dramatically in the 19th century. Starting in the 1820’s, a huge number of European immigrants began to arrive in Boston, with the majority originating in Ireland. Unlike most colonial Irish immigrants, many of newly arrived Irish were Catholics, which the Protestant English majority saw as a cultural and political threat. Violence against incoming Irish immigrants was widespread, and included incidents such as the Broad Street Riot, when Yankee firemen and an Irish funeral procession brawled in the streets of Boston in 1837.
Despite this violence, problems in their home country such as the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852) increased the numbers of Irish immigrants to Boston. By 1850, the Irish were the largest ethnic group in Boston and continue to be today. Nativist political movements such as the Know Nothing movement expanded around this time, hoping to combat the increasing Irish Catholic population by promoting “Temperance, Liberty, and Protestantism.” Further unfair treatment against Irish immigrants and their descendants occurred in Boston, banning Irish from being buried in public cemeteries, firing the first Irish Boston Police officer Barney McGinniskin, and requiring Catholic students to use the Protestant King James Bible, resulting in the Eliot School Rebellion (1859) and the creation of parochial schools in Massachusetts.
After the Civil War, the Boston Irish made up more than one-fifth of the city’s population. Many social and charitable societies were organized around this time to provide support and community to the Boston Irish population, with many unofficial parades and feasts in honor of St. Patrick taking place in the North End, Charlestown, and South Boston. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, originally founded in New York, held its first Boston gathering in 1878 and organized St. Patrick’s Day marches and festivities through the late 1800’s.
In 1901, the St. Patrick’s Day parade was moved to South Boston. It was a dual celebration: not only was South Boston largely Irish and Irish-American, but it also was the site of Dorchester Heights, where British troops were evacuated from Boston in the early American Revolution. In 1901, March 17th became an official holiday in the city of Boston known as Evacuation Day, and therefore the first South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade commemorated both Irish heritage and military service. Today, the parade continues to be a joint celebration of both St. Patrick’s Day and Evacuation Day. But funnily enough, the first parade was not held on the 17th but the 18th of March, as the 17th was a Sunday in 1901. Evacuation Day officially became a holiday throughout Suffolk County in 1938.
St. Patrick’s Day itself is still not an official holiday in Massachusetts. In 1941, Governor Saltonstall signed an act “making March seventeenth a legal holiday in Suffolk County” though does not mention the occasion for this holiday. However, he did sign the act in both green and black ink, a subtle nod to the Irish community. Several years later in 1947, Mayor Curley gave authority to sponsor the St. Patrick’s Day Parade to the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, who still organizes the parade today.
Since 1901, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade has marched through South Boston annually, though not without controversy. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, reflecting political upheaval in Ireland commonly referred to as The Troubles, some Boston Irish affiliated with the Northern Aid group “marched with a coffin shrouded by the Irish Tricolor and held a sign proclaiming “England, Get Out of Ireland!” They all wore black armbands” (BostonIrish.com). Racial turmoil came to light amid the busing scandal in Boston when the NAACP entered a float in the St. Patrick’s Parade only to be met with rocks, bottles, and racial slurs thrown at them from the “lunatic fringe” present in the crowd. Most recently, the Irish American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston (GLIB) were repeatedly denied participation the parade. After suing the parade’s organizers for discrimination and winning in 1994, the organizers cancelled the event, leading Mayor Menino to boycott the parade throughout his term of office. However, in 2015, Boston Pride and Outvets, a gay veterans group, were able to join the procession, and as a result Mayor Walsh was the first mayor to march in the parade since 1995. Combatting the parade’s reputation as one of drunken revelry, some South Boston residents have made efforts to make the parade more family-friendly, such as creating “family zones” and sober sites from which to watch the parade and promote the cultural and military significance of the day.
Unfortunately Boston’s beloved St. Patrick’s Day Parade was cancelled in 2020 and again in 2021 due to concerns related to COVID-19. However, there are many ways to learn and celebrate Irish heritage throughout Boston. Visit
the Boston Irish Tourism Association’s website and walk their
Irish Heritage Trail to learn more about the long history of Irish and Irish-Americans in Massachusetts, and stay safe by participating in remote or online events for St. Patrick’s Day.
Further Reading:
Alexandra Bernson
Reference Staff
