yeoman farmers
Self-sufficient land tillers
Yeoman farmers were small landowners who worked their own land, distinct from tenant farmers or large plantation owners.
The term is most associated with early American history, where yeoman farmers represented an ideal of independent, self-sufficient citizenship—owning enough land to support a family without relying on hired labor or enslaved people.
Jefferson envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers as the backbone of democracy.
- smallholdersFarmers of modest plots
- freeholdersOwners of land absolutely
- free and clearOwning without obligations attached
- tenantsProperty renters
- homesteadersLand-claiming rural settlers
forty acres · plowmen · tillers · subsistence · acreage · fields · harvest · plow · oxen · sturdy · independent · rural · agrarian · land · soil · crops · self-sufficient · common folk
- Colonial VirginiaJamestown, James River, tobacco cultivation, Powhatan, Pocahontas
- farming historycrop rotation, enclosures, manorialism, threshing machine, open-field system
- rural folkpeasantry, countryfolk, farmhands, farmworkers, field hands
- Yorkshire historyWensleydale, lead mining, wool trade, drystone walls, monastic ruins
- American Farmingfamily farms, corn, wheat, hay, farmsteads
- Colonial SettlersPilgrims, Puritans, Dutch settlers, indentured servants, freemen
yeoman farmerstenant farmers
Agriculturalists renting land
sharecroppers · serfs · farm laborers · landless peasants · croppers
yeoman farmersplantation owners
Large-scale agricultural landholders
landed aristocracy · landed gentry · feudal lords · planters · squires
yeoman farmersaristocrats
Hereditary ruling class
landed gentry · nobility · lords · paupers · peasantry
yeoman, farmer, farm, yeomanry, farmers, farming, farmed, farmland, farmhouse