Dr. Hardin wrote: If you pay attention to the writings of Landon Carter and George Washington, you'll see what the real distinction was: "planters" planted tobacco and corn; "farmers" cultivated wheat....I've always wondered if anyone has looked into a possible correlation between crop choice and revolutionary leanings. Warren R. Hofstra makes the same distinction between planters and farmers, plantation and farm, in his study of the dynamics leading to the separation of Clarke County from Frederick County, _A Separate Place: The Formation of Clarke County, Virginia_ (White Post, Va.: Clarke County Sesquicentennial Committee, 1986). Chp. 2, "The Plantation and the Farm," might be of interest to followers of this thread. Wheat-growing in the Shenandoah Valley seems to be a recurring interest of Dr. Hofstra in this and other works. In _A Separate Place_, he also touches on the relationship between what he calls "degrees of landowning and political participation"--the second part of my clip from Dr. Hardin. Don Zochert Winfield, IL