The Kansas City St. Patrick's Day Parade

History - The Early Years

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.

For years uninterrupted, the Irish continued to stage bigger and grander parades. More groups joined in - the police department, the Hibernian Knights, Father Dalton's Temperance Cadets, Select Knights of A.O.U.W., German Catholic societies, the Knights of St. Patrick, labor unions, city and county officials, more divisions of the AOH from Kansas City, Kansas, and other surrounding communities.

Of course, there were honorees galore. The various marshals wore swords and stovepipe hats, and sported real shamrocks sent over from Ireland. To be a marshal was a coveted assignment. To be Grand Marshal was akin to being mayor for a day. As one early report put it: "There was much wire pulling among the Irish politicians for the position of Grand Marshal." For not only was the Grand Marshal the object of much admiration from the crowd but he (the first female Grand Marshal would not be named until more than 100 years later) also had the privilege of appointing all the marshals of the different parade divisions.

For many years, the top honor went to an Irishman named Capt. Jeremiah Dowd, a celebrated veteran of the Civil War, former police chief and a man who reportedly wielded considerable clout in local politics.

"No parade was thought complete in all its appointments in the early days that did not have Capt. Jeremiah Dowd riding at the head of it in his gorgeous regalia," recalled an elderly veteran of the police force in an interview in 1921. "He was more than six feet tall and the newspaper used to refer to him as 'a fine figure of a man' and never missed commenting on the 'fine and soldierly manner' with which he managed his magnificent charger."

Captain Dowd cut a dashing swath through the streets, in his wide green sash and French military chapeau with a trademark green ostrich feather trailing from one side. Close in popularity was Owen Maney, who ran a grocery store at Independence Avenue and Holmes. He eventually succeeded Dowd as Grand Marshal.

Other early Grand Marshals included Capt. Dennis Malloy, John Granfield, P. C. Collins, Capt. Hugh MacGowan, Capt. Thomas Flahive and Edward Kelly.

In the late 1870s, the parade formed near Market Square at Fifth and Main, and wound its way to St. Patrick's church for a special Mass, before proceeding up the hill to 12th Street and over to Father Donnelly's residence, then back to Market Square for final review. Following the Grand Marshal and other dignitaries on horseback, the telltale alert of the snare drums announced the Ancient Order of Hibernians, "with plumes waving," followed by the Irish benevolent societies, brass bands, and the school children of St. Patrick's.

A regular crowd pleaser was a fireman and small-time North Side politician with a fiery disposition and a colorful personality. Andy Scanlan was the recognized "beau brummel" of the early-day fire department. In the late '70s, Scanlan strutted over the parade route sporting a red shirt faced with green satin, a belt with engraved silver buckle, a trumpet slung over his shoulder on a cord of green velvet, and a high-backed fire hat ringed with a wreath of shamrocks.

Kansas City's fire and police departments were essentially Irish organizations. In the '70s and '80s more than half the city's firefighters listed Ireland as their place of nativity. As many as two-thirds of the policemen had Irish surnames. Virtually whole departments participated in the parade while teenage watchboys manned the stations.
By 1886 the parade included as many as 5,000 marchers. The Times called that parade "one of the most brilliant ever held in the city."

Promptly at nine o'clock in the morning on the 17th of March, dozens of bands and religious groups and service organizations lined up behind Grand Marshal John Granfield and platoons of metropolitan police commanded by Capt. Hugh MacGowan. From Fifth and Broadway, the parade moved across Fifth to Main Street, then south to 12th, and down 12th to Cherry, and then north on Cherry to old St. Patrick's, where Mass was held. After Mass, the parade reformed and proceeded, as traditionally, to St. Teresa's Academy.

By now, the academy girls were official judges of banners and crowned the winner. The event was highly competitive and marked by flowery speeches and formal responses. Not to be outdone, Kansas City's Ancient Order of Hibernians one year painted a banner so gigantic that its construction easel was a railroad trestle. It required eight men to carry it "when there was little or no wind!"

The parade then moved a block to the Cathedral, where Bishop Hogan read a poem in Gaelic. Following that, the parade resumed once again, returning now to Fifth and Broadway, where marchers this time turned west, tromping downhill to Union Avenue, past the depot, to Mulberry, and south on Mulberry to 14th Street. At that point, Wyandotte County contingents split off and headed for home.

"I never did such drilling in my life as I did in those old St. Patrick's Day parades - sure we marched from morning till night and then danced [at Long's Hall] till morning again and thought nothing of it," recalled the old policeman. He mused about the difficulties of keeping under a stovepipe hat the one year he was a division marshal.

Said he, "If you've never tried to ride a horse prancing with the music and manage a sword and a stovepipe hat at the same time on a windy day, which St. Patrick's generally was, you don't know nothin' about the job."

But the officer, as he approached retirement in 1921, pined for the old parades - the bands playing tunes from home, like "The Wearing of the Green" and "O'Donnell Aboo," and the memories stirring in us of the old sod that we'd left not so long before, and everybody so full of enthusiasm and good cheer and a little drop, maybe, that no one thought the worse of in those days.

"Sure," he told the paper, "the first thing we did of St. Patrick's Day morning was to 'drown the shamrock ... Did you never hear tell of 'drowning the shamrock'? 'Twas an old custom and gone for many a day, like all the good old customs.  When you met a friend for the first time on St. Patrick's Day in the morning, you'd ask him, 'Have you drowned your shamrock yet?' Well, maybe he had, but to be genial he'd say no, anyway, and in we'd go to the most convenient fountain of potheen and each of us would take the sprig of shamrock from our coats and drown it in the drink while we gave the old Irish toast:

Here's to the land of the Shamrock, so green!
Here's to each lad and his darling colleen!
Here's to all those we love dearest and most!
And God save ould Ireland' that's an
Irishman's toast!

The old officer defended the practice of drowning shamrocks by saying: "And the divil a bit of harm was in it, if you didn't drown it too deep or too often ..."

The Kansas City Daily News estimated the 1887 parade to be 18 blocks in length. Division 3 of the AOH held a ball afterward in the Board of Trade Hall. That evening's article in the Daily News noted, almost incredulously: "It is a noticeable fact that but very few intoxicated men were seen on the streets. Certainly no arrests were made."

Alas, the parades finally fizzled.  As the Irish advanced politically and financially, their attentions broadened and their neighborhoods shifted.  And tolerance from the rest of the community shrunk.  Indeed, the last big parade in 1891 marked the beginning of a contentious era in which the specter of anti-Catholic sentiment grew vivid and violent.

There was no sign of the violence to come on March 17, 1891. The evening Star headline read: "A Glorious Day Greets St. Patrick's Faithful Followers." Beneath three italicized verses of an Irish song, the paper reported a beautiful May-like day: "At an early hour the crowds of people, regardless of nationality, began to assemble on the streets in the neighborhood of the rendezvous ..."

A military band enlivened the air with Irish national melodies. High-spirited horses danced and sidestepped through Old Town and the Market, then south and west through Downtown.  Capt. M. T. Downey led the Hibernian contingents. Marshals John Sullivan and R. E. McDonnell led the Citizens contingent, made up of Mayor Holmes, members of the Council, and the Catholic clergy.  Fire brigades, labor unions, industrial councils, German groups, and marching bands of every stripe stretched out for blocks and blocks. 

There were some 5,000 participants in all. A huge crowd gathered at "The Junction" (where  Eighth and Main is now), waving handkerchiefs at the procession before it turned east and headed to St. Patrick's for Mass. Father Glennon said the Mass, along with Fathers Gleason, Brogan, Cullen, Lillis and others. The service lasted about an hour and a half before the parade restarted and moved westward, past a reviewing stand manned by Bishop J. J. Hogan at 12 th and Washington streets. From there it was over the hill and into the West Bottoms. The Grand Marshal had the final review at Ninth and James streets, on the Kansas side near old St. Bridget's church, where the parade was finally dispersed.

That night, the Knights of St. Patrick held a big banquet at the Midland Hotel, complete with Irish toasts and a formal program. Speakers included the Knights' president, John O'Grady; Father William Dalton; John F. Philips; and John C. Tarsney.  Mr. Frank P. Walsh spoke on his chosen subject:  "The Irish American."

In the ensuing years of unrest and tension that marked the heyday of anti-Catholic sentiment, the Irish parades all but disappeared. The Journal printed huge ghost images of St. Patrick, a shamrock and a harp on its front page in 1893. The Times predicted that everybody of Irish descent would be wearing the green, but sneered in a headline that there would be "No Parade, Luckily"

Celtic music programs were held each year at the Coates House through the turn of the century, but the flashy and boisterous parades were finished. Who could have guessed that night in 1891 at the old Midland Hotel that Kansas City's St. Patrick's Day Parade would not march, loud and proud, again for another 82 years?