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The 19th century Kansas City St. Patrick's Day Parades were pageants of great pomp and circumstance. The Irish Benevolent Society would lead the processions composed of bands, police and fire department personnel and dignitaries of all description (and quite often the German and Italian Benevolent Societies) from church to church in day long extravaganzas often ending with grand balls.
The festivities were always well reported in the Kansas City newspapers. The 19th Century papers would not only publish the line of march and describe the regalia of the participants but would report on the topic of the sermon spoken at the High Mass.
The 1875 Kansas City Times declared the Parade to be "the noblest Pageant of the Year". In the language of the time an 1875 Kansas City Times reporter extolled "To see an army of men who are not afraid to marry young, nor ashamed to rear large families of robust sons and daughters upon the simple fare that honest labor earns, is to know that the age has not wholly lapsed into the vortex of luxury and vice".
Pat O'Neill, Jr., a co-chairman of the Parade from 1987-1989, and proud son of one of the original instigators of our modern day event describes the early history of the Kansas City St. Patrick's Day Parade celebration in the following excerpt from his recently published book, From the Bottom Up: The Story of the Irish in Kansas City.
From 1873 to 1891, Kansas City's exploding Irish population flexed first its pride and later its civic muscle with a series of parades, which highlighted daylong celebrations that included Catholic Mass, luncheon banquets, songs, suds, whiskey and temperance meetings.
The first parade in 1873 flowed from the first St. Patrick's Church at Seventh and Cherry from a High Mass celebrated by Irish-born pastor Father James A. Dunn, with the assistance of four other Irish priests. At the conclusion of the liturgy, the congregation set off down the street in a procession that gathered more participants with every passing block. The local Hibernians, reported the Times, "marched like soldiers, justly proud of their appearance." Falling in behind were a group from the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Children of Mary, and "100 juveniles of West Kansas City." A bunch calling themselves the St. Aloysius Band marched with a huge portrait of their favored saint, the Patron of Youth. The McGee Hook & Ladder Company, rolling along behind co-founder Joe McArdle, plumed and strutted for the crowd, which gathered on porches and sidewalks.
The steadily growing parade crawled through the steep streets of what is now Downtown, stopping at old St. Teresa's Academy, adjacent to Father Donnelly's church. The bands passed through the campus's iron gates and were greeted by young ladies who bestowed upon them wreaths of white flowers and shamrocks. Through the open windows of the academy came the sounds of students singing "National [Irish] airs familiar to all."
The procession then spilled down the bluff to the newly established Annunciation Church and School at 14th and Wyoming, where Father Donnelly washed, anointed and blessed a new church bell, which he is thought to have purchased with his own money and donated to what would soon become the largest Catholic parish in Kansas City.
CONTINUED
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