Does anyone know any source for the living conditions of the canal workers on the Erie and other canals. I believe ..well know for a fact now..that my ggf and his brothers worked on some of the canals..New York, West Virginia and Ohio I think and they ended up farming in Iowa...I believe they were not very prosperous..I can understand single men doing this, living in tents and shanties..but they obviously had their wives and children with them. They had Irish as a first language it seems but probably spoke some English. How did the families live? Does Chiliothe?? Ohio mean anything to anyone? They seemed to pass through there and have children.

There also seemed to be a traveling group of them from Dingle, County Kerry...Garveys, Fitzgeralds (we are probably related to Patrick Fitzgerald, attorney), Murphy, Cahalan (has anyone heard of this name..I never did before this but there were a lot of them..)

Are there pay records or census records or anything? I know it was terribly brutal work, especially in the south.   mg