There were no green beers, no pickup trucks pulling parade floats, and no hordes of tourists in flashy green costumes. Instead, dozens of Savannah’s early Irish immigrants marched half a mile from their hotel near the riverbank to attend a special service at Savannah’s only Roman Catholic church at the time.
This modest procession on March 17, 1824 began one of Savannah’s most beloved and beneficial traditions. On Saturday, Georgia’s oldest city will celebrate its 200th anniversary with a St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Over time, this parade has grown into one of America’s largest cities. Thousands of revelers are expected to pack the sidewalks and plazas along the parade route through Savannah’s downtown historic district.
More than 18,000 hotel rooms around Savannah and Chatham County are nearly full for the weekend. The parade lineup includes at least 230 pipe and drum bands, chauffeured dignitaries, parading military units, and floats decorated with shamrocks. Downtown bars are stocking up on extra beer kegs, and the city has rented more than 320 portable restrooms for drinkers.
Facts you may not know about St. Patrick’s Day
Savannah City Manager Jay Melder said, “Visitors and residents alike are looking forward to the historic vibrancy.”
Over the past two centuries, St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah has transformed into perhaps the South’s biggest street party, somewhere between New Orleans’ Mardi Gras and Florida’s raucous Spring Break.
It’s very different from how Savannah’s celebration began.
Brian Welzenbach laughs with friends while celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, 2017 in Savannah, Georgia. Savannah is planning the 200th anniversary of its beloved St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum, File)
The Hibernian Society of Savannah, founded as a supradenominational charity to assist impoverished Irish immigrants, had planned a momentous day for March 17, 1824. The organization invited Bishop John England, an Irish native, who had been appointed to lead the newly formed Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina. He came to Savannah to speak at the city’s Roman Catholic church.
Hibernians hosted England on St. Patrick’s Day with a morning meeting at a city hotel near the cliffs overlooking the Savannah River. They then formed a procession, accompanied by a band and a standard bearer adorned with the iconic Irish harp and a shamrock, and marched to St. John the Baptist Church at noon to hear the bishop speak.
“Savannah’s example has far-reaching impact,” the bishop told a packed church audience of Catholics and Protestants as a crowd of onlookers stood outside in the rain, The Savannah Republican reported. “So,” he said. “Here, people of different religions may meet as friends and brothers.”
The Irish Society then marched back to the hotel, where the bishop was joined by about 80 members for an evening banquet, followed by endless toasts, said Howard Keeley, director of Georgia Southern University’s Center for Irish Research and Education. he said.
“It looks like they partied all night,” said Keeley, who studies the history of Irish immigration in Georgia. “It was a grand celebration. Hibernian has always had celebrations like this since its founding in 1812. This time it was celebrated in a way with the presence of the Bishop.”
Like much older St. Patrick’s Day parades in New York and Boston, Savannah’s parade likely has its roots in military units that celebrated the holiday during the American Revolution, Keeley said. He pointed to records of Irish-born soldiers who served under George Washington’s administration marching on St. Patrick’s Day.
Savannah celebrations grew with Ireland’s population. Workers from Ireland settled in the southern port city in the 1830s to help build railroads and canals. According to Keeley, the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s brought as many as 2 million immigrants to the American mainland, doubling Savannah’s Irish-born population.
In the decades following the Civil War, Savannah holidays began to show signs of becoming more commercially oriented festivities.
According to “The Days We’ve Celebrated,” a history of St. Patrick’s Day festivities in Savannah written by the late William L. Fogerty, who served as parade grand marshal in 1986, the local clothing store was founded in 1875. By 2012, he was equipped with green ties and gloves.
And after the 1888 celebration, one newspaper reported that Savannah officials ordered businesses to close for a day because “the city is excited about Sunday cocktails.”
By the 1960s, the Savannah parade had yet to become a full-fledged tourist dynamo.
Tim Mahoney, chairman of the parade organizing committee, said that when his father held the same position in 1969, parades were planned “at someone’s dining room table” and included high school bands, locally based bands. He recalled that he was recruited from a military unit, Irish families in the savannah. .
“They didn’t have the money, they didn’t have the resources,” Mahoney said. “But in true Irish leadership fashion, they just rolled up their sleeves and said, ‘Hey, hey, we’re going to make this parade happen.’
Some are calling this year’s celebration Savannah’s 200th parade, but that’s incorrect. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, City Hall has canceled the 2020 and 2021 St. Patrick’s Day parades, and Savannah has held parades since, including during the Civil War, World War I, and the 1921 Irish Revolution. There were years in the past when it wasn’t.
The Bicentennial Parade will be held a day earlier on Saturday, following another long-standing Savannah tradition. Since the March 17 holiday falls on a Sunday, organizers will move the parade to Saturday to avoid disrupting church services.
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Officials expect visitors to arrive even sooner and celebrations in earnest to begin Thursday. You’ll find park fountains with green water. Several downtown buildings, including City Hall and the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, temporarily glow green at night thanks to special lighting.
What would the ancestors of Savannah Festival think?
“They’re going to get blown away,” Mahoney said.
