> >I haven't read ALL of the mail about yeomen - but neither of the two postings on this form that I used to respond are close. Here is what I know about the meaning of "yeoman". Obviously, in a completely different context, it could mean something very different. A yeoman was originally a rank in the middle ages. I'm not sure if it was teh foot soldiers as distinct from the knights, or the people who used bows and arrows for weapons, I think the exact distinction could vary. I think for most pracitcal purposes, it was the common people who in the time around 700 to 1000 AD typically formed part of travelling fighting bands that usually were lead by aristocrats. This was the Saxon structure, and the Viking structure, for instance. They would conquer pieces of land, and then settle it. The yeomen were rewarded with small holdings of land, which they often held free and clear, and not as a feudal fief or in return for ongoing services to a lord. The exact arrangement varied from one region to another, especially within England, and it changed over time. IN medieval times, any sort of private land holding was teh potential for wealth, and many yeomen were quite prosperous. By the 17th century, the structure of land division and ownership varied across England a great deal. In some places, yeomen weren't much different from serfs, in other places, they were people who held land. Consistent with the feudal structure, all land holders were responsible for military obligations or for funding a certain quantity of military equipment. It's interesting to read of teh local militias that existed in England at the time of Charles II, before people ever set foot in the American colonies. And also to read the records on some of my ancestors who were accessed for military equipment. The Normans tried to convert England to a fully feudal society, and they were partially successful to varying degrees in most of England, and not very successful in northern England. Most Scotch-Irish began in Northern England and Scotland. In Northern England, where most people, directly descended from the Danes and Vikings, and still largely on a Danish legal system, were freeholders of land, which their ancestors were granted for their military service when the place was settled. In the rest of England, there were places where everyone was in fact a serf, and places where some people were free holders of land, and what yeoman was varied between one type of place adn the other. IN some parts of England, historians to this day have fun trying to explain the distinction between a yeoman and a serf. This background made for great fun and confusion when people got to this country. In Pennsylania, a yeoman was someone who owned land. In Massachusetts, where the structure of land division and ownership was semifeudal as in the villages most settlers came from, you BOTH were GRANTED your land by the town, AND FORMALLY ADMITTED as a freeman, or a yeoman. The distinction between holding land of a village or communal entity (lords obviously didn't exist in New England and they often didn't factually figure in feudal land holding in England either by that point), and personally owning land, which you could buy or sell, was kind of vague. There's a famous sociological study about the founding of Sudbury, Massachusetts, that discusses these issues in depth. The settlers had a hard time there because they came from all over England and had very different backgrounds when it came to how land was divided and owned, and because, of course, one of the founders was one of my emigrant ancestors with manic depression. He was a compulsive land speculator... :) If the other founder hadn't been as stable as a rock, that town could never have gotten off the ground. Yours, Dora Smith > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail � Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/