In a message dated 8/4/2009 10:58:23 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, sandyhart@mac.com writes: I am looking for the following families who lived in Gallia, Lawrence and Jackson counties from 1830 or so until 1900. In the early days, they were farmers. Later on the men became coal miners or worked in the forges. Many of the left the area in the early 1900s to go to the Yukon gold fields. If you are interested, I could post a short account that my grandmother wrote of her adventures in Alaska in 1908. HANDLEY Samuel his wife Elizabeth (Barger) Handley, his sons (James, Jabez, Christopher, and Samuel), and brothers (Logan, Constantine, John), moved to this area from the Lewisburg, WV area in the 1830s. Christopher and Samuel settled in Symmes Township. James married Jane Slagle and lived in Mt Vernon Furnace (1860s), Elizabeth, Lawrence Co from 1870 and Ironton in the mid 1870s and then to Wellston where they stayed into the 1900s. I hope to find the land that my Gr Gr grandfather James Handley owned in Lawrence Co (Olive Springs?) before he moved to Wellston. I gather that some of the Handleys may have owned a stage coach line of some sort in Ironton in the early 1900s. Their great aunt, Sarah Handley Keyes joined the ill-fated Donner party to find her long lost son in California although she was elderly and ill. Her daughter Margeret was married to the leader of the wagon train, James Reed. She only made it as far as one of the first rivers the pioneers had to ford (the Big Blue River at the Alcove Spring Crossing) in Kansas, where she was the first to die on that ill-fated journey. A memorial to her was erected to her in a nearby park. SLAGLE I would also like to know about the family of James' wife, Jane Slagle - - I believe they were John Slagle and Elizabeth Wiseman, both of whom died in Gallia Co in 1847 and 1877 respectively, possibly Perry. KAVANEY Patrick and Mary Kavaney came to the Lawrence/Jackson Co area from Ireland in the early 1850s (probably separately). Patrick became a citizen in 1857. He and Mary had 10 children between 1855-1875, but it has been hard to trace them due to the many spellings of their last name and the fact that they owned no land. Some of the childrens' names MAY have been John, Catherine, Michael, Maggie, Bridget, Sarah, and Andy. They lived in Elizabeth in the 1860s, Ironton in 1870, and then Wellston. Patrick died in 1899, Mary in 1903. Their son Michael, who died in Wellston in 1906, was my Gr Grandfather. He married Emma Rebecca Handley, daughter of James and Jane (Slagle) Handley. After Michael's early death from "lung disease", the family scattered - - his youngest son Curtis (renamed James Cavannaugh by the ship captain) went to sea as a cabin boy. Myrtle went to Alaska with one of her Handley aunts. Oscar and Harry spent several years in Alaska and then settled in the Bellingham area near their mother, Emma Rebecca married a Canadian, Harmon Markham Marriott. All of them worked in the lumber business. I have a wonderful picture of my grandmother and her aunt working a raft of logs in North Van couverIsland (in long skirts and high-button shoes!) circa 1910.