St. Patrick, the Forgotten Apostle of Florida.

Ave Maria! May our Lady, the Immaculate Queen of Heaven, together with St. Patrick and St. Odran, pray for us! As we prepare to honor and venerate St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, let’s consider this ancient saint’s contribution to Florida. Unknown to most of the St. Patrick’s day crowd is the fact that the first “St. Patrick’s day Parade” was held in St. Augustine, Florida in 1601 AD. After Mass, a public procession was held with a statue of St. Patrick through the streets of the town, led by Father Richard Arthur, an Irish secular priest assigned to the St. Augustine parish. After this procession, a celebration was held by those Catholic settlers, bringing Christendom Florida, as St. Patrick brought it to Ireland. In 1606, Father Arthur opened the first “public” school in what is now the United States. Father Arthur wasn’t the first Irishman in Florida either, there were Irishmen enlisted within the regiment Admiral Pedro Menendez first brought to settle St. Augustine in 1565. Irishmen who helped crush the Protestant French incursion and fought off pagan natives to defend the town and mission. St. Patrick was the patron of the cornfields of the St. Augustine, and one of the earliest statues in the Cathedral, next to our Lady, St Joseph and St. Augustine. Devotion to St. Patrick would spread throughout the missions and parishes of Florida, with Apalachee chief Servant of God Don Patricio Hinachuba, who would later be martyred in 1704, being named after the Irish Saint.

This Irish community would remain in St. Augustine until 1763, when Florida was ceded to the British empire and the Irish inhabitants fled to Cuba along with the rest majority of the loyal Spanish residents. This would not be the end of the St. Patrick’s legacy in Florida. The English would bring their own Irish, servants and laborers. Perhaps following suit with the Quebec act of 1774, the newly appointed Patrick Tonyn, Governor of British East Florida, allowed a religious tolerance towards Catholics. Perhaps unknown to the Governor, there was two Priest already there in St. Augustine since 1768, Father Pedro Camps, a secular priest from Minorca living with the Minorcan and Greeks laborers. The second priest was Fray Bartolome Casanovas, an Augustinian priest who was deported in in 1774 by the new administration who was comfortable with one Catholic priest but certainly not a Spanish one. Father Camps would establish three chapels for the Catholics of east Florida, one on the former lands of Mission Nombre de Dios, another on Mission Guadalupe de Tolomato, and the last on St. George Street where the present Greek Orthodox St. Photios Chapel stands. Father Camps would convert many of the Greeks servants brought over as servants by the British, reunifying them with the true church from their schismatic sect. These Chapels would also be for the Catholic Irish, who continued to maintain the faith in Florida. However, Irishmen would not only preserve the true faith in but also help Christendom reconquer Florida. On 8 May 1779, King Charles II of Spain would declare war on the British empire, and Bernardo de Gálvez, the Governor of Spanish held Louisiana, would spring into action to restore Florida for Spain. Louisiana having its own Freemasonic-French revolt against Spanish rule in 1768 but being put down by Irishmen Don Alejandro O'Reilly, who fought for the Catholic armies of Austria, France, and Spain against Protestant armies. On 27 August 1779 Governor Gálvez would begin his Reconquista and successfully captured Baton rouge, Natchez, and Mobile. On 24 March 1781, the Spanish forces arrived at Pensacola. The British forces at Pensacola consisted of British regulars, the Third Regiment of Waldeck (German Protestants) and the Maryland Loyalist Battalion, as well as the Pennsylvania and Virginia Loyalist Militiamen. Governor Galvez had a superior force, including 320 Regulars from the Regiment of Hibernia (Irish Regiment) under the command of Dublin native Major Arturo O'Neill. The first fight of the siege would be after the Irish regiment landed on Santa Rosa Island and captured the island’s battery and set up artillery which they used to drive away the British ships taking shelter in the bay. On the Irish regiment also blunted an attack by 400 pro-British Choctaw braves on the afternoon of March 28. These Irishmen were always at the front of the combat, defending the artillery and advancing the Spanish, and they were always led by their fearless Major O'Neill. On May 10, realizing his final fortifications could not survive the British General John Campbell reluctantly surrendered. Of the 96 Killed in action from Spanish forces, 16 were from the Irish brigade.

Those brave Irishmen were buried in Pensacola, the city they fought to return to Christendom. After this battle, West Florida was returned for Spain I781 and after the Treaty of Paris 1783, all of Florida was returned to Spain. Major O'Neill was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and For his distinguished and fearless service at Pensacola, he was appointed governor of West Florida. In St. Augustine, Two Irish priests, Father Michael O’Reilly and Father Thomas Hassett, were assigned to St. Augustine in 1784. Most of the Irish brought by the British as servants refused to return with them, they were accompanied by many if the original Irish families which fled to Cuba in 1763. St. Augustine had the highest Irish population for this reason.  Dubin native Father O’Reilly, later becoming Vicario of East Florida in 1791 and dedicating the current Cathedral-Basilica of St. Augustine in 1997. In 1794, Father James Coleman, a native of county Louth, Ireland was made pastor of St. Michael’s in Pensacola and Ecclesiastical Judge of West Florida. These Irish communities in Pensacola and St. Augustine would continue until 1821, when the United states annexed Florida. Some of the Irish families fled to Cuba or Spain, other remained until this day. One notable Florida “Irishmen” is Francisco R. Moreno. Born in Spanish Florida, he would later be charged with the command of The Saint Patrick's Battalion, a Mexican Army unit which fought against the United States during the US invasion of Mexico in 1846. The unit consisted of primarily Irish and other Catholic European immigrants, who had been drafted into the US Army and had defected after witnessing the mistreatment of Catholics and the sacking of Monasteries by US forces. Colonel Moreno, originally an Officer who fought for Spain against the Mexican Revolution, volunteered to fight off the “Yankee invasion.” As a child he lived through both failed US invasions of Spanish Florida and voluntarily took command of the St. Patrick’s battalion, likely having worked with the Regiment of Hibernia (Irish Regiment). The St. Patrick’s battalion recruited men with these words: “You must not fight against a religious people, nor should you be seen in the ranks of those who proclaim slavery of mankind as a constitutive principle ... liberty is not on the part of those who desire to be lords of the world, robbing properties and territories which do not belong to them and shedding so much blood in order to accomplish their views, views in open war to the principles of our holy religion".

Palo Alto Battlefield in Brownsville, Texas, held one of the five major Battles St. Patrick’s battalion fought in.

Colonel Moreno would be captured with most of his surviving men at the Battle of Churubusco, defending an old monastery. The rest of the battalion was killed in the fighting. Colonel Moreno would be tried as a Spaniard and illegally executed by hanging with other Spaniards and the members of the St. Patrick’s battalion in September 1847. This is the time frame, 1840s, most St. Patrick’s day celebrants think of when they think of the start of Irish history in the US, unaware that St. Patrick and his sons were among some of the first in North America, to labor and fight for Christ and his Church.