The pivot around which my own research turns is Frances Theresa Vallillee; of earlier generations, I have assembled many clues but little certainty.
It is not clear even when Frances was born. Following the census record she seems to get younger and younger as time goes on; one suspects this may have been an intentional obfuscation. Through these records, however, it is possible to determine that she was born between 1864 and 1869 in Cleveland, Ohio. She lived with John Buckley and his wife, her mother, Elizabeth Lyons as shown by the 1870 and 1880 censuses. Her father was probably Edward Vallillee who died in Cleveland in 1864. As the name Vallillee was quite uncommon in Cleveland and we know that Frances’s parents were both from Canada, it is possible that this Edward Vallillee was the child of George Vallillee and Ann O’Hanlan born in Grenville Township, Quebec. His death record in 1864 gives his age as 31, which fits rather well. John and Elizabeth Buckley also had an older daughter named Margaret and a younger son Joseph. It would seem likely that Margaret is the daughter of Elizabeth Lyons by Vallillee or someone else.
The father of Frances’ first child, Myrtle, was Oscar McNalley, whom the state of Ohio later sued on her behalf for support. This Oscar was the from a Great Lakes shipping family — William McNalley and his wife Elizabeth Perew, about which there is considerable information. 
A vessel called the Mary E Perew, pictured at right, was built in 1869 and plied the Great Lakes until 1905. It was either named after Mary or her mother, whose name I have not found.
Sometime before October 1886, Frances married Charles Barnard from Rome, New York. Charlie was a switchman on the U.P. Railroad and they moved for a short time to Barrington, Illinois, where they had their first child. Frances and Charles divorced by 1900 (on grounds of desertion). She remarried to George P. Lare, a paper hanger. He adopted her younger children in Denver Colorado. She lives on 25th street in Denver in 1900, but then moves to 4249 Umatilla. She stays there, at least until 1920 and then moves to Oakland, California, probably with her son Carl Barnard Lare, where she died and is buried in 1927 in a “pauper’s grave.”