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The two things I have found most valuable, aside from talking to the relatives, have been city directories and the U.S. Censuses. If you know the names of any relatives that were alive in 1930 (the earliest available census), then look there first, and work your way back. The only sources of finding family relationships are the censuses, wills, directories (occasionally), marriage and birth records, and death certificates, in that order. Being from central PA you may be related to Col. Michael Kerwin, the most decorated Kerwin in the Civil War. You may also be lucky enough to have had an ancestor who was prominent enough to have had newspaper articles or biographies printed about them. Col. Kerwin is one of those. He is covered extensively in the official records of the Civil War, which are also available online.
As for finding where in Ireland they came from, this can be pretty daunting if you can't get a clue from relatives-especially if the ancestor had a common first name like John or James. Fortunately American immigration records are pretty good and you can access them online to at least get clues. Canadian records of entry unfortunately start in the 1860's. There were two major waves of Irish immigration, in the Famine period (1845-1850) and during the Land Reforms in the 1880's. KERWIN was generally the English Protestant spelling in Ireland, with Kirwan being by far the most popular spelling then and today. My own family records have Keirwan, Kerwan, Kirwan, and Kerwin listed in the same church records in the space of 1826-1839, so don't overlook any spellings in Ireland. Older spellings (18th century) are Kerevan, Keerevan, Keerwan, Keervan, etc. Primary locations of Kirwan families in Ireland are Galway (where the Protestant converts with Coat of Arms lived), Tipperary, Wexford, Wicklow, Dublin, and Lough. There are others scattered about, but these are the primary area.
So my suggestion: sign up for the Ancestry.com or Genealogy.com full service and spend a lot of nights digging for gold. When I started out 4 or 5 years ago I only know my great-grandfather's name, his occupation, and what town he came from. Since then I've found perhaps a hundred other family membersin the U.S. and Ireland, and have had 3 great research trips there. It's a fun hobby-hope you get lucky.
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