American gentry

The American gentry were members of the American upper classes, particularly early in the settlement of the United States.

The Colonial American use of gentry followed the British usage (i.e., landed gentry) before the independence of the United States. The Southern plantation was commonly evidenced in land holdings by estate owners in Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. North of Maryland, there were few large compatible rural estates, except in the Dutch domains in the Hudson Valley of New York.

The families of Virginia (see First Families of Virginia) who formed the Virginia gentry class, such as General Robert E. Lee's ancestors, were among the earliest settlers in Virginia. Lee's family of Stratford Hall was considered among the oldest of the Virginia gentry class. Lee's family is one of Virginia's first families, originally arriving in Virginia from England in the early 1600s with the arrival of Richard Lee I, Esq., "the Immigrant" (1618–64), from the county of Shropshire. His mother grew up at Shirley Plantation, one of the most elegant homes in Virginia. His maternal great-great grandfather, Robert "King" Carter of Corotoman, was the wealthiest man in the colonies when he died in 1732.

Thomas Jefferson, the patron of American agrarianism, wrote in his Notes on Virginia (1785), "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if He ever had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." 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 1600s and played an important role in the history and government of the English colony of Virginia.

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