A new museum exhibit in St. Augustine explores the city's connections to Ireland that date back centuries. | Noah Hertz, Jacksonville Today
Published on March 9, 2026 at 2:23 pm
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When you think of St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S., you probably think about annual Irish parades in Boston and Chicago that date back centuries. But what about St. Augustine?
A new museum exhibit at the city’s downtown Visitor Information Center explores the historic connections between the U.S.’ oldest colonial city and Ireland.
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The exhibit, titled Lá Fhéile Pádraic: St. Patrick & the Irish Diaspora in East Florida 1595-1840, traces the stories of various Irish people who found their way to St. Augustine starting in the 16th century.
They are people like Richard Arthur, the man credited with introducing St. Patrick’s Day to Spanish St. Augustine all the way back in 1600 — more than 100 years before what was long believed to be the first celebration of the holiday in Boston.
Historian J. Michael Francis was one of the driving forces behind the exhibit. Having studied Ireland’s connections to St. Augustine for years, he sees the exhibit as an opportunity to share some of the little-known stories he has helped unearth.
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“I think part of the hope is that this exhibition will provide a brief teaser into the presence of a lot of Irish people who have not received all that much attention historically,” Francis says. “And that Florida, even Spanish Florida, these periods where the Spanish crown governed St. Augustine and east Florida, was a place with a surprisingly high number of not just Irish-born people, but people of Irish descent.”
The exhibit is a collaboration between St. Augustine, the Irish consulate in Florida and researchers from Sin Barcos, a nonprofit organization Francis helps run that is dedicated to exploring Florida’s early history.
The Irish diaspora in St. Augustine
Ahead of the exhibit’s opening Monday, the researchers and organizers who helped get the exhibit off the ground celebrated with a kickoff event that included traditional Irish music, history lessons and, of course, Guinness beer.
Speakers at the kickoff celebrated the opportunity to acknowledge St. Augustine’s deep historical ties to Ireland. They included Francis; Sarah Kavanagh, consul general of Ireland in Miami; and Minister Niamh Smyth, a tourism official all the way from Ireland.
Kavanagh says people typically associate the Irish diaspora in the U.S. with cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco, but she hopes the history presented in the exhibit through documents, animations and more will shed light on the lasting effects Irish immigrants had on St. Augustine.
“People went to many countries for many reasons, and it’s important to understand that because, of course, the history of the world is the history of the movement of peoples,” Kavanagh says. “Looking back at our history maybe gives us some empathy for the present time.”
Lá Fhéile Pádraic is free to visit at the St. Augustine Visitor Information Center at 10 S. Castillo Drive. The exhibit will be up through the end of April, when the team behind the exhibit hopes to take it around the state.
