Arcadia Publishing, the South Carolina-based press for the popular “Images of America” series and other local and regional history books, has released a new Irish-themed title: Irish Savannah.
Local author Sheila Counihan Winders has collected over 200 vintage photographs tracing the history of the Irish in the southeast Georgia river port. Not surprisingly, many of the images come from the archives of the Catholic Diocese of Savannah.
“When people think about the Irish in America, they always think of the northern states,” Winders wrote. But the Irish have had a presence in Savannah since the city’s founding in the mid-1700s.
This is Arcadia’s 20th Irish-themed title. I wrote in April 2013 about the release of Irish Pittsburgh. The publisher has released similar image collections for such expected locations as Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, plus unusual spots including Arizona and Butte, Montana.
What’s next? “We don’t currently have another Irish-themed book in the works, but are always open to suggestions for titles and/or authors,” Natalie Miller, Arcadia’s southeast publishing editor, told me in an email.
One place noticeably missing from the “Images of America” Irish list: Washington, D.C. That sounds like a project worth tackling.