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Saturday, June 28, 2003 Parades, fireworks part of early celebrations tooBy MORRIS SULLIVAN | News-Journal Correspondent PALM COAST — Mark Twain once called Independence Day “the most remarkable day ever seen.” Writing for the “San Francisco Daily Morning Call,” he described the city’s 1864 celebration, which began at first light with a gun salute from the California Guard. “By eight o’clock in the morning, the sidewalks of all the principal streets were packed with men, women and children,” he wrote, and the entire city was decorated, “swathed in a waving drapery of flags...(creating) a quivering cloud of gaudy red and white stripes.” The main event of the day was a parade, which included “regiments of schools, soldiers, benevolent associations,” the fire department and various dignitaries, all marching to music and with banners. There were floats, too. One from the Butchers’ Union featured a live buffalo, as well as a glue factory wagon bearing the motto, “We stick fast to the Union.” The evening ended with fireworks, “grand discharges of rockets whose bursting spray of many-colored sparks were visible to all after they had reached a tremendous altitude and these gave pleasure and brought solace to many a sorrowing heart. A number of balls and parties and a terrific cannonade of firecrackers, kept up all night long, finished the festivities of this memorable Fourth of July in San Francisco.” With the possible exception of daybreak gun salutes, live buffalo and glue factory wagons, the 1864 event probably was not all that different from the Freedom Festival plans, which continues July Fourth traditions that date back to the few years after our nation’s founding. The Fourth of July was chosen as the date to celebrate Independence Day because, on that day in 1776, the first Continental Congress adopted the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. The document first was read publicly July 8 in Philadelphia. Its reading was announced by the ringing of the town bell. The declaration was read in other cities throughout the month. The readings were accompanied by celebrations and the firing of guns and firecrackers. The War of Independence lasted until 1783, when Independence Day was made an official holiday. John Adams, a signer of the declaration, the first Vice President and second President of the new nation, perhaps helped to establish some of the traditions that have continued into this century, when he said in a letter to his wife he believed the day “should be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires...from one end of the continent to the other.” July 4 did not become a federal holiday until 1941. However, by 1870, the date had become the most important secular holiday of the year. The Fourth of July is a uniquely significant date for Flagler County, said Diane Marquis, president of the Flagler County Historical Society. “The county became Flagler County over the Fourth of July weekend in 1917,” she said. “It was a huge celebration in downtown Bunnell.” The celebration was accompanied by parades, marching bands, banners and decorations and a huge barbecue, both to celebrate America’s independence and to celebrate becoming a county. The governor, Sydney J. Catts, even came to Bunnell to proclaim the new county. “That was a big deal,” she said. Like the rest of the country, however, folks in the county had traditional celebrations with barbecues, fish fries and the like. “And, it seems like we have always had fireworks,” Marquis said. “The big thing was always to go out to the beach on the Fourth and they’d shoot them off from the end of the pier.” |
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