this was posted to the Kilkenny message board, if you want to reply, click on the link... Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/WWC.2ACI/3313.1.1 Message Board Post: Hi Ellis, Thanks for all the info. For some reason I thought Castlecomer was a much bigger townland. Funny you asked about whether my ancestors were farmers or worked on the canals or railroads. My ancestors from Kilkenny were farmers in NY. I had always assumed that many Irish emigrants were farmers at the same time they were, but I read that only 2% were still farmers by the end of the 1800s. My Bowes line sold the family farm in 1912, so they were part of that approximately 2%. Then I have another line - Glover - from Athlone, Westmeath. They emigrated first to just north of Quebec in Valcartier. The father earned a land grant for taking a saber wound at Waterloo. Years later, when a son was in trouble with authorities for his involvement with the Whiteboys, the family hightailed it to Canada to get the land grant. Two sons became stone cutters, while the others farmed the Valcartier land. The stone cutters worked on the fortifications of Old Quebec, then on the Welland Canal, then on the Erie Canal. One was a foreman with 100 or so cutters working under him at Amsterdam! aqueduct in the 1830s. The New York State Archives holds many old records of the Erie Canal, and I am drafting an email to them to see if they have any personnel records still: http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/researchroom/rr_trans_recrds.shtml. In the 1850s these stonecutter sons found a farm for sale in NY. They bought it, and all the Glovers (except the 3 that died in the 1832 cholera epidemic) rejoined there, leaving Valcartier behind. Now if I could just find out what regiment the father was in, in Waterloo. How are you familiar with the Crow/e surname? Does it enter into your family? Martha -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com All outgoing mail virus free, scanned by Norton