What is a Yeoman Farmer and
what does he do? Describe the
lives of two typical yeoman
farmers.
By You Young Cho
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 Steel’s life was religion. His family
prayed daily together.
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