The Ancient Order of Hibernians
Broward County Florida
We are America’s oldest Irish Catholic Fraternal Organization founded concurrently in the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania and New York City in May, 1836. The Order can trace its roots back to a series of similar societies that existed in Ireland for more than 300 years. Today the AOH exists in Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and we have a presence in every State in the United States. While these organizations share a common thread, the American AOH is a separate and much larger organization.
The History of the AOH
The early Irish societies were born of a need in the mid-fifteen hundreds to protect the welfare of fellow Irish Catholics, and especially the clergy who risked immediate death to keep the Catholic Faith alive in occupied Ireland after the Penal Laws of 1691. These various secret societies were formed across the country to aid and comfort their people by whatever means was available. Similarly, the AOH in America was founded at New York’s St. James Church on May 4, 1836 by men emulating these Irish societies, to protect the clergy and churches from the violent American Nativists (“Know Nothings” and their followers) who attacked Irish Catholic immigrants and Church property. At the same time the vast influx of Irish Immigrants fleeing Ireland’s Great Hunger in the late 1840′s, prompted a growth in many Irish societies in the USA – the largest of which was, and continues to be, the AOH.
