I'm not sure that "peasant" is an apt description of any 18C Virginians. Technically as they owned their own land they would be "yeomen". I also think the distinction Harold GIll is urging, while possibly of utility in the 17C, is less and less so during the 18C. While it is true that many, even most, early settlers in Tidewater concentrated on growing tobacco, this was less true as the 1700s progressed. The profits available from tobacco were no longer as high and the demand for commodities like corn and wheat growing. Also where the terrain of Tidewater made large plantations possible, the topography of the Piedmont and Ridge and Valley was more ammenable to smaller farms. By the mid 1700s at least 40% of Virginia's exports were non-tobacco. The majority of the acreage of the Piedmont was devoted to non- tobacco cultivation. There have been a number of studies done on this. And the economy of even the plantations was diversifying. A couple of classic examples are Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier. Realizing that his tobacco revenues were falling, Washington built a large still and a fishery. Jefferson's slaves at Monticello ran a large nailery. At Montpelier for a considerable period over half of the income of the property was generated by a large smithing operation on the site of the tempietto. Other "plantation" owners were also involved in economic diversification, which included iron production. The Tayloes were involved in the Bristol Ironworks, Neabsco, and Occoquan. Alexander Spotswood built both the Tubal Ironworks (often incorrectly called Germanna) and the double air furnace (foundry) at Massaponax. Gov. Gooch was involved in the Fredericksville Ironworks (not Spotswood). The Washington's were partners in the Principio Co, which operated a number of ironworks in Maryland, but also a blast furnace on Washington's land along the Accokeek Creek near Ferry Farm (The Potomac, now called Accokeek IW). By the time of the American Revolution the British North American Colonies were making more iron than the home country. About half of which was made in Maryland and VIrginia (much of the rest in Pennsylvania). Bergstrom, Peter V. 1980 Markets and Merchants: Economic Diversification in Colonial Virginia, 1700-1775. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor and London. Brothers, James H. IV 1999a Introduction to Pre-Industrial Iron Manufacturing. Presented at Furnace & Forge: 225 Years of Iron Working, Lost River Valley Museum, WV. 1999b Isaac Zane and The Marlboro Iron Works. Presented at Furnace & Forge: 225 Years of Iron Working, Lost River Valley Museum, WV. 2000a Manufacturing Iron in Colonial Virginia: Its Importance and How it was Made in Blast Furnace, Bloomery, and Finery Forge. Paper presented at the Pioneer America Society, Richmond, VA. 2000b Blast Furnace, Forge, and Foundry- The Making of Iron in Colonial Virginia (revision of the Uplands Paper). Paper presented at The Archeological Society of Virginia. 2001 'Carried on At A Very Great Expense And Never Produced Any Profit' Titanium and the Albemarle Ironworks (1770-72): The Case for Slag Analysis. Paper presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology, Long Beach, CA. 2002 'Carried on At A Very Great Expense And Never Produced Any Profit' The Albemarle Ironworks (1770-72). Unpublished Masters Thesis, Department of Anthropolgy, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg. 2004a It's a Horse, It's a Bear, No It's a Salamander: Toward a More Concise Jargon for Iron Industrial Archaeology. Paper presented at the 2004 Ironmasters, Rehoboth Beach, DE. 2004b The Manufacture of Iron in Colonial America. Paper presented at the 1st Pre-Industrial Iron Conference, The Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY. 2005 Blast Furnace, Forge and Foundry. Uplands Archaeology in the East: Symposia VIII & IX (pp. 335-353). Paper presented at the 2000 Uplands Conference, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA. Archeological Society of Virginia, Special Publication 38-7. Brothers, James H. IV and Charles P. Swann. 2001 'Carried On At A Very Great Expense And Never Produced Any Profit': Titanium and the Ruination of the Albemarle Ironworks (1770-72). Paper presented at the Society for Industrial Archeology, Washington, DC. Brothers, James H. IV; Charles P. Swann, and Geof Grimes 2002 Albemarle Iron Works (1771–1772): Why did this operation fail?. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 189 (2002) 340– 343. Elsevier Science B.V. www.elsevier.com/locate/nimb. Paper presented at the IX International Conference on Particle-Induced X- Ray Emission and its Analytical Applications (PIXE 2001), Guelph, Canada. Dermody, Larry D. 1992 Fire and Ice: The Col. James Madison Ironworks at Montpelier, 1762-1801. Paper presented at the 1992 Annual Conference of The Society for Historical Archaeology, Kingston, Jamaica. Kamoie, Laura Croghan 2003 Neabsco and Occoquan: The Tayloe family's iron plantations, 1740-1780. Prince William Historical Commission, Prince William. Lewis, Lynne G., Larry D. Dermody 1990 Archaeology on Ice: The Tempietto/Ice House at Montpelier. Manuscript on file at Montpelier. McCusker, John J, and Russell R. Menard 1985 The Economy of British America, 1607-1789. Institute of Early American History and Culture, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London. Parker, Scott K, Lynne G. Lewis, Larry D. Dermody, and Ann L. Miller 1996 Crafty Businessmen: A New Perspective on 18th-Century Plantation Economics. In The Archaeology of 18th-Century Virginia, edited by Theodore R. Reinhart, pp. 183-207. Council of Virginia Archaeologists and the Archeological Society of Virginia Special Publication No. 35. Archeological Society of Virginia, Richmond. James Brothers [log in to unmask] On Sep 27, 2007, at 23:49, John Philip Adams wrote: > This sounds like more of a class distinction than a land size issue. > Plantations belonged to the Gentry and the farms belong to the > peasants. > > John Philip Adams