THIS  William and Mary (Donohoe) Lyons, Yankton, South Dakota website is for you, their descendants down to the latest great-great grandchild or great nieces and nephews of today and those yet to be born.

The grandparents of William F. Lyons- Jeremiah and Ellen Lyons-came from County Waterford and of Mary Donohoe Lyons -Michael and Ellen Donohue-came from Counties Westmeath and Tipperary, Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s.

This website is a collection of existing documents written by people who knew our founding immigrant ancestors and by our contemporaries.

I hope that you will roam around the website pages at your leisure, but more importantly that you might make a contribution to it sometime by sharing with other relatives a narrative and/or photo of your own life today.  We are all enriched by your contributions to the larger family history.

I offer as an incentive the poem recited by my father's cousin, Florence Finley Kohlbach, at the Lyons family reunion organized 1986 in Yankton South Dakota.

SEE >>LYONS LIBRARY 

foreBooks available --Free.

V I D E O   GALLERY 

• 6 Lyons Brothers * Yankton, SD, Interviewed by John Lyons>Click
  

• Lyons Farm Auction February 1, 1997 * Yankton, South Dakota>Click
  

•  Lyons Family Reunion     July 14, 1986  * Yankton, South Dakota >Click

• Lyons Family Reunion      August 10, 1991 * Yankton, South Dakota >Click

•  Go to >>Videos by Bob 

The Bridge Builder

AN old man strolling along the highway

Came at the evening cold and gray

To a chasm vast and deep and wide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

The sullen stream had no fears for him,

But he turned when safe on the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Now why," said a lonely traveler, near,

"Do you waste your time by building here?

Your journey will end with the closing day,

And never again will you pass this way."

But the old man replied;

"This journey which has been naught to me,

To a fair haired youth may a pitfall be,

He, too must cross in the twilight dim.

My friend, I have built this bridge for him."

For some of us,  our journey will end with the close of the day over the next decades. I have built this website for the fair haired youths who succeed us so that they will have a bridge to the past and to their future.

-- Robert F. Lyons-son of William & Mary Lyons, Kennebunkport, Maine  *  June 2010

williammarylyons@yahoo.com