Hello, Betty and List,   If you would like an actual historical account -- rather than fictional (The Big Wind) -- of the conditions in Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s, you might pick up my book from UMASS Press, Ballykilcline Rising / From Famine Ireland to Immigrant America. Two chapters of seven deal with conditions in Ireland that contributed to the rent strike, evictions, and forced emigration of hundreds of tenants from Ballykilcline in Kilglass Parish, near Strokestown, in County Roscommon. The rent strike began in 1834-35 and ended in 1847-48 when the people were sent to New York City.   Among other aspects, I considered the seasonal labor migration to England and Scotland; the existence of newspapers, banks, and a postal system; the presence of British military in Irish townlands; the existence and roles of the secret societies; the anti-tithe war of the 1830s; the influence of Daniel O’Connell; and more generally the British land policies in Ireland and the famine itself. My investigation of conditions starts in the 1700s and focuses on the operations of the Mahon estate in Strokestown, where the Famine Museum is now located. The Mahons were middlemen landlords to the people in Ballykilcline from the 1790s until 1834. In 1847, Landlord Denis Mahon evicted and sent nearly 1,000 people to Grosse Ile, Quebec; half of them died en route, in quarantine, or in the island's hospitals. We know of at least one family evicted from Ballykilcline whose daughter and grandchildren were sent to Grosse Ile and died.   Nearly 20 percent of the Ballykilcline evictees in the U.S. went to or through Rutland, VT, where they took jobs in the marble quarries. Some of them lost their homes a second time there due to strike activity in pursuit of fair wages and working conditions.   Some evictees and/or their children settled in several places in Massachusetts as well. Family historians may want to check the surnames of the townland’s residents on the Ballykilcline web site at www.ballykilcline.com to see if their names are listed.   FYI, GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s immigrant Irish ancestor, Michael Sheeran, also came from Kilglass parish, from the townland of Knockhall, across a country road from Ballykilcline. I found his Rutland naturalization record saying so in the database I developed during my book research.   And Irish President Mary McAleese had ancestors in Strokestown. The family name was Lenihan. When Mahon estate records recently were turned over to a new research center at Maynooth, one was a document stating that her ancestress, Mary Lenihan, had sought food during the famine from the Mahons.   Best, Mary Lee Dunn