Mary,

A little more of a description would be helpful here. I am sure you have heard Erie Canal Songs that were Irish-American as well as many RailRoad songs with the same history. The Canal and The RailRoads could not have been built without the Irish in America. The Canal is still a living structure in many of the towns along its water course. My house was built on the bank of the Erie in 1854. The canal had by then been in operation for more than 25 years. Many of the people in the town I live in are of Irish descent and trace their ancestry back to the canal. The Jordan phone book is full of McMullens and Mc Nabbs and Mc Intyres, there are some Byrnes, Johnsons, Johnstons, Spains and Delaneys. Many of the Irish who built the canal were recruited in Ireland with promises of paid passage and a job with housing and food at the end of the passage. The ticket was 4th class, the job was the hardest thing everdone since the pyramids, the housing was a drafty bunk house with neither doors or windows. And the food was all the venison and eggs you could stand. All of which would be conducesive to drinking, bitching, whinning, and song writing and singing.

Regards

Don Meixner