Second Savannah group tours the county
LARRY BYRNE, director of Club Choice Ireland, and Cathy Keane, owner of Heritage Tours Wexford, were busy promoting the county last week to a delegation from Savannah, Georgia, the second such group to visit our county this year in connection with the Wexford-Savannah link.
Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, Jo Piani, director UK and Ireland of Visit Savannah, Bill Miles, President and CEO of Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce and Dr Howard Keeley, director of the centre of Irish Research and Teaching at Georgia Southern University, were here in Wexford exploring our extraordinary connection and viewing the county’s attractions.
Twenty per cent of Savannah’s population is of Irish extraction and it boasts the second largest St Patrick’s Day parade in the world and approximately 68% of that 20% are of Wexford extraction.
In the 19th century, a large number of Wexfordians left Ireland for Savannah when the Graves Shipping Com- pany based in New Ross opened an office there. This led to many Wexford natives settling in the southern city.
One of those Wexfordians was William Kehoe, who emigrated to America with his mother, father, four brothers, and three sisters in 1842. The family settled in the Old Fort District of Savannah and William became an apprentice in an iron foundry working his way up to foreman, and eventually, he bought the foundry and in the aftermath of WWI, he built a new foundry and quickly became one of Savannah’s most successful businessmen, encour- aging many Wexfordians to follow him to Savannah.
Earlier this year the hunt for the Iron Mogul’s birthplace brought students from the city of Savannah to the small rural village of Monamolin, where they visited nearby churches and cemeteries for proof of the Kehoe family’s residence in the area.
The Wexford-Savannah Axis, a new initiative being worked on by Wexford Tourism and Club Choice Ireland, will bring closer together the communities of the south-eastern corner of Ireland and the south-eastern corner of the US based on our shared ancestry and history. Larry Byrne of Club Choice Ireland has been diligently putting together an alliance of some of the best hotels, resorts and golf clubs in the east and southeast of Ireland and said that the members of the Savannah delegation were hugely impressed with their recent visit to Wexford and he thanked Cathy Keane of Heritage Tours Wexford for her invaluable input and Enniscorthy Historical Re-enactment society for making the visit to Enniscorthy Castle, Athenaeum and Vinegar Hill a memorable one.