Hello Paul, I am assumng that Brittany was born in the US, not sure if that is the fathers name or the mothers name, I searched Roots Ireland for the name Ardis, which is unusual, doing a baptismal/ civil record search between 1870 and 1890 there are 27 Ardis turn up, some may be double but all bar one are in County Antrim with the other in County Down, both counties are now in Northern Ireland, that is part of the UK rather than the Republic of Ireland. You can see all BMDs registered in Ireland pre 1921 for there on this free site but sign in under civil records, all one country pre 1921.
I initially thought that the name would be Dardis so was surprised to find Ardis, records for Antrim can be found on PRONI also, Public records of Northern Ireland. https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/ and https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni ;
McGowan is the Gaelic form of Smith and found mainly in North Leitrim and south Donegal (they border each other)
They Irish census for 1901 and 1911 are also free online, realise they are already in the US but you may find family there but difficult to narrow them down, it is a plus that is most likely they are from Antrim. http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ ;
Good Luck
Pat
