American gentry

Jefferson who spent much of his childhood at Tuckahoe Plantation was a great-grandson of William Randolph, a colonist and land owner who arrived in Virginia from England in the mid-17th century.

George Washington was a commercial farmer interested in innovations, and quit his public duties in 1783 and again in 1797 to manage his plantation at Mount Vernon.

Wood notes that "Few members of the American gentry were able to live idly off the rents of tenants as the English landed aristocracy did.

"[6] Some landowners, especially in the Dutch areas of Upstate New York, leased out their lands to tenants, but generally—"Plain Folk of the Old South"—ordinary farmers owned their cultivated holdings.

As there was a propensity to marry within their narrow social scope for many generations, many descendants bear surnames which became common in the growing colony.

[citation needed] At the same time, other once-great families were decimated not only by the English Civil War, but also by the enormous power of the London merchants to whom they were in debt and who could move markets "with the stroke of a pen.

Many of the early settlers came from the West Midlands in England, although the Maryland families were composed of a variety of European nationalities, e.g. French, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Swedish, in addition to English.

[citation needed] The Riggin family of Maryland who also had holdings on the Eastern Shore of Virginia is of Irish descent and origin in the Kingdom of Munster.

[citation needed] Charles I of England granted the province palatinate status under Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore.

Maryland was uniquely created as a colony for Catholic settlers to find a haven from religious persecution, but Anglicanism eventually came to dominate, partly through influence from neighboring Virginia.