AOH Lehigh County Division 1 Allentown PA

Are you interested in becoming a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians Lehigh County Division One? If so, please go to our online application form where you can submit your application via the internet! Click Here

For addtional info on the 2009 parade please go to this link:

www.allentownstpatricksdayparade.com

Contact Pat Gavigan for the 2008 raffle tickets for your chance to win a trip to Ireland!

-1900-
Around the turn of the century the sixth ward in Allentown was the heart of the Irish community. Most Irishmen belonged to the Immaculate Conception church (Allentown's Oldest Catholic Church) on Ridge Avenue. In addition, on Ridge Avenue, there was a Young Men's Temperance Society and the Hibernia Fire Company Social Club where many Irishmen belonged for social activities. We believe all of these groups had events on or around St. Patrick's Day. However, it is said that a certain Barney McNulty stood atop the five story Belleview Apartment house at Ridge and Gordon Streets and blew his bugle every St. Patrick's Day.

The first St. Patrick's Day Parade was held in Allentown in the late 1860's. The first reference found locally regarding St. Patrick's Day was in the Lehigh Register, a weekly newspaper, on March 20, 1866. Irish miners working at the Friedensville zinc mines were denied the day off. Not happy with the decision, they arguedwitht their bosses and the non-Irish miners. "A drawn battle was the result," the newspaper noted. "Many were wounded by the shillelaghs, stones, and other missles used by the beligerents." As for the parade, the first account of a St. Patricks Day Procession was in 1869. "Agreeably to our exception, last St. Patrick's Day was clear, bright and cold," the weekly newspaper noted on March 23, 1869. The Register called the Irish who participated that day Fenians. The Fenians were an Irish Revolutionary Group who took their name from the Finna. The Finna were the soldiers of a king of Irish mythology, Finn MacCumhall. The Fenians had branches in Ireland and the United States. Newspapers of the day often gave the name Fenians to any Irishman they did not care for. The details given in the paper are few. Apparently several hundred paraded to Catasaqua and Hokendauqua and then retruned to Allentown. Their arrival in town was awaited by crowds mostly women and small boys. After waiting several hours, the crowd saw them coming. "In came the Fenians, at last," the Register said, "headed by the Emaus Brass Band, the procession interspersed with drum corps and the men bedecked with Ireland's color, carrying the Irish and American flags." The account of the 1870 parade is much more complete. It began on Front Street in the city's 6th Ward, where most of the city's Irish lived. Participants gathered at 8:45am. Before they marched, they heard a speech by T.S. Emmens, an editor of the Daily Chronicle. Emmens reminded that, like them, he too had worked in the local iron mines a few years ago and he knew them as "men whose warm hearts had given him a place when the iron hand of poverty was on him." Emmens said that "between them and him was a bond of sympathy...all aliens from the old country, all seeking more room and more liberty in a land whose proudest boast was an asylum for the oppressed." The procession then marched down Front Street and up the Hamilton Street hill. At its head was the City's Coronet Band and Drum Corps and mounted Parade Marshalls. "With the green emblems of the men it made a very pretty picture," reported the Daily Chronicle. The Marchers turned around at some point and returned to the Immaculate Conception Church, where they went to Mass. After church they marched off to Catasaqua and attended a "frolic." Some of the marchers went to Hokendauqua and Coplay to join in celebrations there. The newspaper reported that the evening many returned to the city "by car," which could either mean train or horse car as the electric street car had not yet been invented.
Thanks to Frank Whelan his research and this article.