Section 3. _The Old Virginia County._

By common consent of historians, the two most distinctive and most
characteristic lines of development which English forms of government
have followed, in propagating themselves throughout the United States,
are the two lines that have led through New England on the one hand
and through Virginia on the other. We have seen what shape local
government assumed in New England; let us now observe what shape it
assumed in the Old Dominion.

[Sidenote: Virginia sparsely settled.]
The first point to be noticed in the early settlement of Virginia is
that people did not live so near together as in New England. This was
because tobacco, cultivated on large estates, was a source of wealth.
Tobacco drew settlers to Virginia as in later days gold drew settlers
to California and sparsely Australia. They came not in organized
groups or congregations, but as a multitude of individuals. Land
was granted to individuals, and sometimes these grants were of
enormous extent. John Bolling, who died in 1757, left an estate of
40,000 acres, and this is not mentioned as an extraordinary amount of
land for one man to own.[7] From an early period it was customary
to keep these great estates together by entailing them, and this
continued until entails were abolished in 1776 through the influence
of Thomas Jefferson.

[Footnote 7: Edward Channing, "Town and County Government," in
_Johns Hopkins University Studies_, vol. ii. p. 467.]