My Thoughts: One of my gggrandfathers bought a small farm, about 100 acres, a couple of months before he married and agreed to pay for it with meat and produce at Abingdon market prices..He managed to pay for the farm and before he died, gave his three daughters goodly sized farms, 400 to 600 acres..built a large brick house..about 1860..and gave his two living sons about 1000 acres of prime farm land in washington Co. Va....I don't know how he did it...but I suspect he was a hard worker and good manager...The "trickle down" theory hasn't worked for me however...one of my brothers was rebuilding an old house for a lawyer in Abingdon...the lawyer asked an old lawyer, jokingly, what he knew about the Hearls...the old man said," I've known them all my life, none of them ever had much, they are too honest to have anything"...I'd rather have that said about my family than to be rich!" G. Lee Hearl...Abingdon, Va...