On the right side of the hall in St. Augustine’s Visitor Information Center sits a small, 400-square-foot gallery where a fascinating chapter of the city’s history is now on display. Here, Dr. J. Michael Francis and his team explore the Irish of Spanish Florida through a new exhibit, Lá Fhéile Pádraig: St. Patrick and the Irish Diaspora in East Florida, 1595–1840.
The Sin Barcos research team uncovered more than 200 Irish names in St. Augustine’s parish registers preserved in the Diocesan Archives. Using the General Archives of the Indies in Spain, the researchers then began to flesh out the lives and fates of some of those individuals.
The most interesting discovery for me is the life and times of Padre Ricardo Arturo, also known as Richard Arthur. He was St. Augustine’s first Irish missionary priest and the first to inaugurate a feast day celebration for St. Patrick.
Irish by birth and a soldier by profession, Father Arthur entered the seminary in his 40s and was later assigned chaplaincy roles at Spanish military installations. His service aboard Admiral Gonzalo Méndez de Canzo’s ship, the Santa Clara, eventually led to his assignment in St. Augustine.
Appointed vicar of La Florida and ecclesiastical judge by the Cuban Franciscan bishop Bartolomé de la Plaza, Father Arthur organized Mass and processions for St. Patrick’s feast day from 1600 to 1602. Dr. Francis discovered a reference to the event in St. Augustine’s treasury records under munitions expenditures — because the celebration included cannon fire.
Father Richard Arthur and the Irish priests and religious women who followed were memorialized on the grounds of the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche at Mission Nombre de Dios in 2015.
I was honored to attend the opening event for Lá Fhéile Pádraig, hosted by Ireland’s Consul General in Miami, Sarah Kavanagh. Guests enjoyed presentations on the historical background of the Irish diaspora in St. Augustine, along with 16th-century Irish music performed on flute and harpsichord. The exhibition was formally opened by Niamh Smyth TD, Irish government minister.
You can read the story of Father Arthur and others featured in Lá Fhéile Pádraig: St. Patrick and the Irish Diaspora in East Florida, 1595–1840 at the St. Augustine Visitor Information Center from now through April 30. Located at 10 S. Castillo Drive, the building is open to the public Monday through Sunday, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. If you miss the exhibit in St. Augustine, keep an eye out — it will travel to Jacksonville after April.
