This book tries to explain to the reader how the headright system, tobacco cultivation and the importation of slave labor transformed the colony of Virginia from a society of small farmers to the aristocracy of large plantation life. At the turn of the eighteenth century, most Virginia landowners were still self-sufficient small farmers holding a few hundred acres of land. The appendix in this book is the closest thing to a census for the years 1704-1705. The appendix is made up of over 7,000 Rent Rolls of individual landholders, listing them by county with the numbers of acres they had.
Thomas J. Wertenbaker
(1922), 2022, paper, 260 pp.
ISBN: 9780893080549
117-VA194
