By You Young Cho What is a Yeoman Farmer and what does he do? Describe the lives of two typical yeoman farmers.

What is a yeoman farmer? Yeoman could refer to a free man holding a small landed estate, a minor landowner, a small prosperous farmer, a journeyman, or a loyal or faithful servant. Most southerners were yeoman farmers, and they enjoyed folk culture based on family, church, and local region. They were very hard working and individualistic, and they acquired large tracts of level land, purchased slaves, and became farmers.

What do yeoman farmers do? There were many responsibilities in the households, and woman wanted to be masters of their households. They were very religious, and they were farmers who owned a farm and could do as they pleased on their land, grow what they wanted to grow, sell what they wanted to sell.

John F. Flintoff John F. Flintoff was a North Carolina person that wrote about his life. At the age of 18 he went to Mississippi seeking fortune and he worked as an overseer for slaves to earn money but he gave up and he went back to North Carolina Once he got better he came back and bought the cheapest slaves he could muster and then he was fired and he returned to North Carolina, sold some slaves, and bought some land. He became very prosperous later on when he made a plantation, but he never received the cotton planter status that he wanted.

Ferdinand L. Steel Ferdinand L. Steel was a young yeoman also like John F. Flintoff. He came from North Carolina and went to Tennessee to work as a river boat man but took farming in Mississippi. He bought store-bought goods by selling 5 or 6 bales and he worked also by selling cotton. Cotton was his main cash crop and the woman spun and wove the cotton into cloths while the men hunted game. He has never owned a slave his whole life. He became sick later on and died. The focus of Steels life was religion. His family prayed daily together.

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