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Event

St. Patrick's Day on Beaver Island, 1959

Also 1959 St. Patrick's Party

Draft — sources verified, prose evolving

TypeEvent
Date1959-03-17
WithinBeaver Island
ErasModern era
On this page
Event
Date
1959-03-17
Kind
Celebration
Carried out by
Holy Cross Altar Society
Followed by
St. Patrick's Day on Beaver Island, 1960
Eras
Modern era
Concepts
celebrationcommunityheritageirish-arranmore
Within
Beaver Island

Summary

The Beaver Beacon’s March 1959 issue announces an island supper party planned alongside the Chicago Beaver Island Club’s separate St. Patrick’s party; its April 1959 issue reports the outcome in detail: morning Mass, a traditional Altar Society corned beef and cabbage dinner, school children’s Irish dances, high-school singing, a community sing, and dancing, with the hall decorated green.

Program

Morning Mass, a corned beef and cabbage dinner served by the Holy Cross Altar Society (with green jello, cake, rolls, and coffee), Irish dances by the school children (rehearsed all week by the Sisters), traditional melodies sung by the high school students, a community sing, and dancing afterward.

Evidence limits

The source calls the venue only “the Hall,” without the fuller name “Holy Cross Hall” used in adjacent years’ issues; because this edition’s text alone does not name the structure, took_place_at is left empty and spatial_status is set to approximate rather than asserted against structure/holy-cross-parish-hall. The same April 1959 issue separately describes an early snowmobile (“a strange looking object came glidding over the ice”) visiting the island on March 17th, which drew a crowd of children but is reported as an unconnected novelty, not part of the St. Patrick’s program — it predates the Civic Association’s organized harbor-ice snowmobile races of 1971-1972 by over a decade and is not treated as a race here. The March 1959 item’s account of the Chicago party is a separate event, tracked in St. Patrick's Party for Holy Cross Church, Chicago.

Open questions

  • Was “the Hall” in this account Holy Cross Hall, consistent with the 1958 and 1968 editions that name it directly?
  • Is the March 17, 1959 snowmobile visit connected in any way to the island’s later adoption of snowmobile racing as a St. Patrick’s Day event (1971 onward)?

See also

Sources

  1. Announces that "the Beaver Island Club of Chicago is planning a very Gala party in honor of ST. PATRICK" (a separate event, see event/st-patricks-party-for-holy-cross-chicago) and, in the same item, "We too on the Island are planning a supper party, with a full evening of entertainment to follow." The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1959-03_Beaver-Beacon
  2. The held five-page issue PDF is paired with the canonical OCR source and confirms the island and Chicago party announcements; it does not expand either event’s program or outcome.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1959-03_Beaver-Beacon
  3. Reports the day in detail: morning Mass, visiting, an evening Altar Society "typical St. Patrick Dinner" of corned beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, green jello, cake, rolls and coffee, Irish dances by the school children (rehearsed all week by the Sisters), traditional melodies sung by the high school students, a community sing, and dancing, with "the Hall, as well as people... decked in GREEN." The same issue reports an unrelated visit that day by two U.P. men on an early snow-mobile, which drew a crowd of curious children but was not part of the organized program. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1959-04_Beaver-Beacon
  4. The held four-page issue PDF is paired with the canonical OCR source and confirms the island St. Patrick’s program and the separate snowmobile visit; it does not expand the celebration or travel record.
    data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1959-04_Beaver-Beacon

Added 3 August 2026. Recent changes

Cite this article

Beaver Island Archive, “St. Patrick's Day on Beaver Island, 1959”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/beaver-island-st-patricks-day-1959/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Beacon, March 1959, "GALA CELEBRATIONS...." (and 3 further sources listed on the page).

Last revised 2026-08-03. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.

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