In the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, a gentleman farmer is a landowner who has a farm (gentleman's farm) as part of his estate and who farms as a hobby rather than for profit or sustenance. [1] [2]
The Collins English Dictionary defines a gentleman farmer in the United Kingdom as one who is actively involved in farming but does not do it for a living, or a person who happens to own a farm but does not farm it himself (paraphrase). A gentleman farmer of the United States is defined as a rich man who can afford to farm for pleasure, or a rich man who farms not to earn, but because he is interested in it (paraphrase). [3]
The farm can vary from under ten to hundreds or even thousands of acres, and may produce any number of types of grains, poultry, or other livestock. A gentleman farmer employs labourers and may also employ a farm manager, and the farm is usually not the chief source of his income. He generally has his own private income, works in a profession, owns a large business elsewhere, or some combination of the three. [4] [5] [6] [7]
Some notable British gentlemen farmers include: Thomas Shaw-Hellier, director of the British Army's Royal Military School of Music and a breeder of Jersey cattle; William Strickland, 6th Baron Boynton, of Yorkshire, numismatist and author of the Journal of a Tour of the United States of America, 1794–95; the pirate Edward Collier, second-in-command to Sir Henry Morgan during his expeditions in Spain; and the Kent County Cricket Club cricketer Hopper Levett.
American examples include James Roosevelt I, the father of President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Dwight D. Eisenhower, who retired to a farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, after leaving the White House; Winthrop Rockefeller, son of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who moved to Arkansas in 1953 and established Winrock Farms on Petit Jean Mountain; James Jefferson Webster, who owned multiple business and served in the Rockingham County local government; Frederick Hinde Zimmerman; [8] Frank C. Rathje; William Locke Allison, known for Allison Woods, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995; [9] and Robert Williams Daniel, a bank executive who survived the sinking of the Titanic and later married Margery Durant, daughter of General Motors founder Billy Durrant, and was elected to the Virginia Senate in 1935. His farm, Brandon, one of the oldest continuous agricultural operations in the United States, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, [9] and was further declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1985. [10] [11]
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmland or might work as a laborer on land owned by others. In most developed economies, a "farmer" is usually a farm owner (landowner), while employees of the farm are known as farm workers. However, in other older definitions a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of plants, land, or crops or raises animals by labor and attention.
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel, and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings, and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times, the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or at sea.
Rappahannock County is a county located in the northern Piedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia, US, adjacent to Shenandoah National Park. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 7,348. Its county seat is Washington. The name "Rappahannock" comes from the Algonquian word lappihanne, meaning "river of quick, rising water" or "where the tide ebbs and flows." The county is included in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Glenview is a 6th-class city along the southern bank of the Ohio River in northeastern Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States The population was 531 at the 2010 census.
Woodstock is an incorporated village located within the town of Woodstock in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the village population was 900.
Esquire is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, esquire historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman and below the rank of knight. Some sources cite that the title was bestowed on "candidates for knighthood in England", and even used with respect to other dignitaries, such as justices of the peace, sheriffs, and serjeants.
The landed gentry, or the gentry, is a largely historical British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. It is the British element of the wider European class of gentry. While part of the British aristocracy, and usually armigers, the gentry ranked below the British peerage in social status. Nevertheless, their economic base in land was often similar, and some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers. Many gentry were close relatives of peers, and it was not uncommon for gentry to marry into peerage. With or without noble title, owning rural land estates often brought with it the legal rights of the feudal lordship of the manor, and the less formal name or title of squire, in Scotland laird.
In real estate, a landed property or landed estate is a property that generates income for the owner without the owner having to do the actual work of the estate.
A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology, involvement of family in labor and economic impact. Smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent, smallholdings may not be self-sufficient, but may be valued for the rural lifestyle. As the sustainable food and local food movements grow in affluent countries, some of these smallholdings are gaining increased economic viability. There are an estimated 500 million smallholder farms in developing countries of the world alone, supporting almost two billion people.
A hobby farm is a smallholding or small farm that is maintained without expectation of being a primary source of income. Some are held simply to bring homeowners closer to nature, to provide recreational land for horses, or as working farms for secondary income.
The Cyrus McCormick Farm and Workshop is on the family farm of inventor Cyrus Hall McCormick known as Walnut Grove. Cyrus Hall McCormick improved and patented the mechanical reaper, which eventually led to the creation of the combine harvester.
Lower Brandon Plantation is located on the south shore of the James River in present-day Prince George County, Virginia.
Rose Hill Farm, also known as the James-Marshall-Snyder Farm, is a double-pile, two story brick farmhouse with Greek Revival features near Shepherdstown, West Virginia. A log house on the property was built circa 1795, while the brick house was built around 1835. It is believed that the log house was built by Samuel Davenport, who leased the land from the Stephen family. In 1821 the property was sold to Thomas James.
Gap View Farm, near Charles Town, West Virginia, is a historic farm complex built in 1774. The farm was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 9, 1997.
Aspen Hill is a farmhouse, built about 1840 near Charles Town, Virginia, by James G. Hurst, a middle-tier farmer and landowner, who sought to build a residence befitting his rising status. The house occupies a middle ground between the grand mansions of the landed gentry and the more humble dwellings of more modest farmers. The house lacks some of the details and craftsmanship present in more substantial houses.
Gentry are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Gentry, in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates, upper levels of the clergy, or "gentle" families of long descent who in some cases never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms. The gentry largely consisted of landowners who could live entirely from rental income or at least had a country estate; some were gentleman farmers. In the United Kingdom, the term gentry refers to the landed gentry: the majority of the land-owning social class who typically had a coat of arms but did not have a peerage. The adjective "patrician" describes in comparison other analogous traditional social elite strata based in cities, such as the free cities of Italy and the free imperial cities of Germany, Switzerland, and the Hanseatic League.
Henderson Hall Historic District is a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)-listed historic district in Boaz, Wood County, West Virginia. The primary contributing property is Henderson Hall, a home in the Italianate style from the first half of the 19th century. Other residences at the site are a tenant house from the end of the 19th century, and "Woodhaven", the 1877 home of Henry Clay Henderson. Additional structures include a smokehouse, two corn cribs, a carriage barn that also served as a schoolhouse, a scale house used for storing agricultural equipment, and two barns. Also included within the district are the 19th-century Henderson family cemetery, a wall, a mounting block, and three mounds associated with the pre-Columbian Adena culture.
Valley View is a mid-19th-century Greek Revival residence and farm overlooking the South Branch Potomac River northwest of Romney, West Virginia. The house is atop a promontory where Depot Valley joins the South Branch Potomac River valley.
The Butler-Wallin House, at 1045 E 4500 S, Millcreek, Utah, in Salt Lake County, Utah, was built in 1928–29. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
The Butler-Wallin House, built in 1928-1929, is a one-and-a-half-story Period Revival-style residence. The house is significant under Criteria A for its association with the agricultural and suburban development of central Salt Lake County. The Butler-Wallin House was originally built as the showpiece of a 35-acre farm. The house and farm had several owners during the historic period, and each had different agricultural use for the property. The farm acreage land was sold for residential development between the 1950s and 1980s, but the house remains a distinctive reminder of the neighborhood's agricultural heritage. The Butler-Wallin House is a rare example of a farmhouse that represents a subset of second-generation Salt Lake County residents, the "gentlemen" farmers. Prosperous businessmen, who like Robert Butler and Alvin G. Wallin, kept their in-town jobs while maintaining suburban farms for hobby, experimentation, and educational purposes. The Butler-Wallin House is also significant under Criterion C as an architectural landmark in the area. The Butler-Wallin House was designed by the first owner, Robert W. Butler, whose avocation was architecture. The design of the house was derived from published plans for farmhouses, but adapted by Butler to produce a period revival hybrid of the English Tudor and Colonial Revival styles. It is the only substantial period revival-style frame house in the area. Thehome's beautiful architecture and lush landscaping made it a popular venue for weddings, receptions, and other social events during the historic period. The Butler-Wallin House and landscape contribute to the historic resources of its Salt Lake County neighborhood.
A country gentleman who has a farm as part of his estate.
A man who farms mainly for pleasure rather than for profit
gentlemen farmers lord acreage sheep.
My father was a gentleman farmer in the sense that he had a private income... he didn't need to worry too much if the farm itself didn't make any money.[ permanent dead link ]
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