I was talking to a newly found second cousin (I have no knoweldge of my father's family basically) and he said our great grandmother, Maggie Lyons, daughter of a Cornelius Lyons, born 1833 or so, lived in Clermont Iowa...(would love to find her mother's name)...married to Timothy Garvey from Ballyferriter Ireland..
Anyway, he was saying she wore petticoats of a particular color, notsure which...and smoked a clay pipe (which I vaguely remember my father saying something about)...and these two items are supposed to be a clue as to where she might have come from. She was in Iowa by the 1850s I believe...so does anyone have a clue?
Also, the Garvey brothers, at last some of them, apparently worked on teh canals (I always thought it was railroads but canals make sense) in West Virginia?/ Are there canals in West Virginia? And something to do with a town called Berekely in the east coast of US. New YHork? I think he said something about the Erie canal....it gets interesting...where did the Erie start and stop? Icould google but I can't at work ad I am at work right now, but now signed in yet....)