Southern Minnesotans are deeply traditional in their own peculiar ways. One manifestation of this traditionalism has been keeping the St. Patrick's Day Parade on the saint's day, rather than moving it out of Holy Week.
Barring cancellation because of the snow we're having, St. Peter will hold its St. Pat's Day parade today, beginning on Third Street near Broadway at 5:30 p.m. and there will be a St. Pat's parade at 5 p.m in Southern Minnesota's outdoor partying capital, New Ulm:
The annual parade will take place at 5 p.m. It will proceed, as usual, the wrong way up Minnesota Street from Third South Street to Fourth North Street.
Over at Centisity, Flash is touting his First District Irish creds, all one-eighth of his ancestry (though one of his foremothers was the St Pat's Day Queen in St. Peter). We do a bit better, with our Irish ancestry hovering somewhere between one-fourth and three-eighths, depending upon how you calculate some of those Orangemen on Dad's side (usually not very highly, as they are among the stone-cold killers part of the family tree).
One of this week's projects is to go to the Nicollet County Historical Society to read up on "The Osbornes of County Louth, Ireland, and Nicollet County, Minnesota, U.S.A"; we're descended from a Louth County Osborne who moved on early from Nicollet County to Watonwan. They were part of the breaking of the prairies and their families were not alone.
Large swaths of Southern Minnesota were settled by Irish Catholics, a population movement spurred--but not started--by Archbishop John Ireland becoming a railroad agent. More details here:
The United States' leading Irish colonizer was Archbishop John Ireland who was born in Ireland but brought up in America. In 1864 Ireland formed the Minnesota Irish immigration society to promote immigrant aid. With this venture, Ireland was unsuccessful but was not perturbed and within one month of him becoming Bishop he set up the Catholic Colonization Bureau with Dillon O'Brien editor of the Northwestern Chronicle as its head.
Ireland prevented speculators from buying up the land by becoming the sole agent for the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. From 1876 to 1879 Ireland held contracts for 369,000 acres in southwestern and mid-central Minnesota. With a $400 minimum stake needed for a family for its first year, it meant many poor Irish families were eliminated from the scheme. Those who took up Ireland's offer were from the Midwest and New England. The colonization scheme settled Irish in promising areas of good farm land within reach of their churches. The land was purchased at a rent while the railroad benefited by the sale of the land and the ensuing railroad custom; the Catholic Colonization Bureau earned the agent's fee of 10% and the satisfaction of developing the new territory as Catholic. Ireland started 10 farm towns that stretched along railroad routes from Adrian to Graceville.
Bishop Ireland was not the only one interested in aiding the Irish; General James Shields, statesman and entrepreneur, whopurchased the townsite of Faribault and selective lands in 1855 that later became known as Shieldsville, established one of the state's first organized colonies. More than 200 Irish families, mostly from the East coast settled in and around Shieldsville, paying $1.50 to $2.00 an acre for farms of 80 to 160 acres.
Southeastern Minnesota became the first major Irish concentration in the state along the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers.
One remaining influence Southern Minnesota's Irish have in on the blogosphere: Flash and Kid Oakland, like us, come from Irish roots that were transplanted to the prairie soil (a gift for blarney thrives amid the stolid Norsemen).
It's different now to visit the Madelia and St. James area; there are new immigrants who've revitalized the prairie towns built by my own immigrant ancestors. And just as the NCHS holds information about my background, it's documenting the progress of New Americans moving into Southern Minnesota [pdf report here].
Here's hoping today's snowfall isn't in the tradition of the St. Patrick's Day Blizzard of 1965. That played havoc with the pheasants and set the stage for the Flood of 1965.
Photo: Irish in Derrynane Township, LeSueur County, drinking beer.
"one of his foremothers was the St Pat's Day Queen in St. Peter"
Thanks for the Link. I've updated with a picture of my dear departed Grandmother!
Posted by: Flash | March 17, 2008 at 05:34 PM