Social stratification
In terms of the white population, the top five percent or so were planters who possessed growing wealth and increasing political power and social prestige. They controlled the local Anglican church, choosing ministers and handling church property and disbursing local charity. They sought elected and appointed offices. About 60 percent of white Virginians were part of a broad middle class that owned substantial farms; By the second generation, death rates from malaria and other local diseases had declined so much that a stable family structure was possible. The bottom third owned no land, and verged on poverty. Many were recent arrivals, or recently released from indentured servitude. Social stratification was most severe in the Northern Neck, where the Fairfax family had been given a proprietorship. In some districts there 70 percent of the land was owned by a handful of families, and three-fourths of the whites had no land at all. In the frontier districts, large numbers of Irish and German Protestants had settled, often moving down from Pennsylvania. Tobacco was not important there; farmers focused on hemp, grain, cattle, and horses. Entrepreneurs had begun to mine and smelt the local iron ores.