i have a ?? about returnees.

[greatauntoftriplets]

5. It's hghly unlikely that your ancestors owned land.

Mine certainly didn't

You can thank Cromwell and the Penal Laws for that. https://hilo.hawaii.edu/campuscenter/hohonu/volumes/documents/FromOppressiontoNationalism-TheIrishPenalLawsof1695SamanthaHowell.pdf

Here's a list of the Penal Laws:

https://www.libraryireland.com/HistoryIreland/Penal-Laws.php

As late as 1870, 97 percent of the land in Ireland was leased to tenant farmers. It was a lease-at-will system where the tenants could be thrown out if they owed rent money. That's why you read about so many evictions during the famine years. My great-great grandmother was one of those. Her husband died in 1848. At some point, she and her six children had to move into a nearby town where she worked in a mill. I'm not sure of the exact timeline. When she emigrated in 1853, the landlord paid the passage on a coffin ship (the Robert Kelly out of Liverpool to New York). He then sent her to a mill that he owned in Portland, ME, to work off the cost of the passage for seven family members.

One of her daughters married a brewer from Chicago, which is why I don't live in Maine.

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/c-eight/ireland/ire-land.htm