yeoman farmer
Self-sufficient land cultivator
A yeoman farmer owns and cultivates a small plot of land, working it himself rather than employing laborers or tenants.
The term evokes self-sufficiency and modest independence—neither wealthy landowner nor landless peasant.
Historically associated with rural England and early America, yeoman farmers represented a democratic ideal of citizens who owned enough to be economically free: Jefferson envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers.
- rural communitySettlement outside cities
- salt of the earthFundamentally decent, reliable people
- landownerOne possessing real estate
- civic virtueDevotion to community welfare
- self-relianceDepending on oneself alone
honest work · sweat equity · plow · property rights · thrift · dirt poor · crop rotation · agrarian society · American frontier · inheritance · homesteader · pioneer · rusticity · market day · irrigation · freehold · forty acres · land grant
- farming historycrop rotation, enclosures, manorialism, threshing machine, open-field system
- Jefferson EraThomas Jefferson, Democratic-Republicans, Louisiana Purchase, Monticello, Lewis and Clark
- peasantryserfs, tenant farmers, villagers, common folk, laborers
- Antebellum Southplantation, cotton kingdom, overseer, slave quarters, big house
- Early RepublicGeorge Washington, Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Constitutional Convention
- enlightenmentVoltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Kant, Montesquieu
yeoman farmertenant farmer
One who leases farmland
sharecropper · serf · cottager · crofter · farm hand
yeoman farmerlord
Nobleman or ruler
nobleman · feudal lord · serf · squire · landed gentry
yeoman farmerplantation owner
Agricultural estate proprietor
absentee landlord · agribusiness · gentleman farmer · subsistence farmer
yeoman, farmer, yeomanry, farm, farms, farmed, farming, farmland, farmhouse