A large part of the settled land was divided up into great estates,
though there were many small farms. Some of these estates had been
acquired for little or nothing by Cavalier favorites of the colonial
governors. A few were perfectly enormous in size, and this was
particularly the rule on the "Northern Neck," the region in which Mount
Vernon was situated. The holding of Lord Thomas Fairfax, the early
friend and patron of Washington, embraced more than a score of modern
counties and contained upward of five million acres. The grant had been
made by Fairfax's grandfather, Lord Culpeper, the coproprietor and
Governor of Virginia.

The Virginia plantation of 1760 was much more sufficient unto itself
than was the same plantation of the next century when methods of
communication had improved, articles from the outside world were easier
to obtain, and invention was beginning to become "the mother of
necessity." Many of the large plantations, in fact, bore no small
resemblance to medieval manors. There was the planter himself residing
with his family in the mansion, which corresponded to the manor house,
and lording it over a crowd of white and black dependents, corresponding
to serfs. The servants, both white and black, dwelt somewhat apart in
the quarters, rude log huts for the most part, but probably as
comfortable as those of the Saxon churls of the time of the
Plantagenets. The planter's ownership over the persons of his dependents
was, however, much more absolute than was that of the Norman lord, for
on the manors the serfs could not be sold off the land, a restriction
that did not apply in Virginia either to black slaves or indentured
servants. On the manor, furthermore, the serf had his own bits of
ground, for which he paid rent in kind, money or service, and the
holdings passed from father to son; on the plantation the slave worked
under an overseer on his master's crops only and had nothing that he