Brigid Coneval was an Irish woman who emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts before the Great War. She lived in the same apartment building as Sylvia Enos. When Sylvia worked in a canning factory before her children were old enough to go to school, Brigid babysat her children, George and Mary Jane. Each woman consoled the other on the deaths of their respective husbands. The two became fast friends throughout the 1910s and 1920s. They attended a speech by Hosea Blackford in 1920 together, and argued about politics the rest of the day.