A short, discouraging history of St. Patrick’s Day in Knoxville
by Jack Neely
The most common mistake people make about history is making assumptions about the deep past based on the habits of recent generations. Take bedtime. My parents have always turned in pretty early. Their parents, even earlier. Based on those trends, you might assume that people of the 19th century went to bed around lunchtime. You’d be wrong, of course, especially if you were talking about the Irish on March 17.
In Knoxville’s antebellum years, St. Patrick’s Day was regarded with some suspicion by right-thinking protestants. It was a holiday for our burgeoning community of Irish immigrants, mostly working-class Catholics who worked on the railroad. An article in an 1857 Knoxville Register notes, “We were reminded that Tuesday was St. Patrick’s Day by seeing the Irish generally on a bust.” You can accurately guess their meaning.
Prejudice against the Irish evaporated during the shared horrors of the Civil War, and St. Patrick’s Day swelled into a general holiday enjoyed in Knoxville by the Irish and non-Irish alike, as downtown was decked in green bunting for parties, speeches, and a long, boisterous downtown parade that by 1869 involved hundreds of participants. Irish Catholics were in charge, but everyone was invited. For a spell, St. Pat’s was one of Knoxville’s most extravagant holidays of the year.
Parades were scarcer in the 1870s, but March 17 remained an occasion for late-night dances. Sometimes called “Fenian Balls,” perhaps indicating solidarity with the separatist movement in Ireland, they were held in various locations—most often in the Lamar House, the old hotel building that still exists as the front portion of the Bijou Theatre. (If the Lamar House ever served anything non-alcoholic, they didn’t advertise the fact. Its saloon was famous for its array of drinks, from low ales to expensive imported liqueurs. Their French brandies went for as much as $2 a bottle.)
The hotel’s ballroom hosted dancing to a brass band. The public was invited, but no one was admitted unless they were half of a couple. Judging by the society-page listing of people who showed up, most of the revelers were Irish: Fogartys, McGuires, O’Connors, Hannafins, Gleasons.
At 11 p.m., the revelers would leave. That might seem plenty late enough for most of us, especially considering that the ball was usually on a weeknight.
But when they left, they didn’t go home. They just went across Cumberland Avenue to another hotel, the Schubert, well-known for its saloon and oyster bar, which served them a big late-night supper for over 100 partiers. They called it “Intermission.” When that was over, they went back to the Lamar House for a few more hours of dancing.
“Until an early hour this morning the dancers merrily tripped to the gay sounds of music,” went a review of an 1870 Fenian Ball in the Daily Press & Herald. At an 1874 celebration, “Joy reigned unalloyed until an early hour in the morning.” It didn’t seem to matter that the morning in question was a Wednesday morning.
In 1890, the Knoxville Journal described the late-night revelry: “Ireland’s sons and daughters were out in full force, and never did anyone see a jollier crowd.... Nor was it confined to St. Patrick’s Day alone...before the party had broken up, Ireland’s memorable day of ‘90 was past and gone, and the wee hours of the 18th had passed away in their joyful procession.”
The 18th was, for the record, a Tuesday. How working people pulled that off on a weeknight isn’t clarified in the newspaper accounts. Only at the turn of the century did they start to go to bed earlier.
By then, most of the Irish who were born in Knoxville considered themselves American. And Americans, following Franklin’s example, were people who went to bed early. Americans were, moreover, trying very hard to stop drinking.
In 1903, the Journal observed. “There are but few of the older generations of Irish-born citizens in our midst, emigration having fallen off decidedly in the last decade.” The reporter added a grim prediction: “In the future, all celebration of the day in Knoxville will be of a religious nature.”
In 1904, the Knoxville Sentinel carried a melancholy announcement. “St. Patrick’s Day, which is March 17, will not be celebrated in this city as it was at one time.... In years gone by it was the custom to have a St. Patrick’s Ball, but for some reason it is left off this time. The only celebration in this city will be by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who will give a ‘smoker’ in their lodge room in the Henson Building....” In that small hall just north of Market Square, a priest gave an address of some sort, railroad man J.A. Garrity “favored the audience with an Irish song,” and Judge Michael Sullivan “danced an old-time Irish jig.” Unlike the Fenian Balls of yore, 1904’s celebration prudently ended at midnight.
The holiday was to grow only more prudent. In 1906, downtown was decked in green bunting, as it had been every March 17 for about 40 years, but St. Patrick’s Day had deteriorated into an auditorium event: a concert of Irish music held at Market Square’s sober public hall. At the early-evening show, a series of performers played “Barney O’Flynn” and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” It drew a standing-room-only crowd, but it sounds as if it was an exercise in nostalgia.
St. Patrick’s Day isn’t what it used to be. But this year, if you’re Irish, honor your ancestors this Wednesday night, and stay up a little later than you really want to.
March 11, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 11
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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