In the colonial and antebellum years, subsistence farmers tended to settle in the back country and uplands. They generally did not raise commodity crops and owned few or no slaves. Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats favored the term "yeoman" for a land-owning farmer. It emphasized an independent political spirit and economic self-reliance.

Yeomen emerged out of feudal hierarchies of manorial Europe as owner-operator agriculturalists. As part of the British colonization of North America, they reformed themselves into a social majority. In Pennsylvania they embraced shifting agriculture and a suite of risk-minimizing practices in response to changing weather patterns.