Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

by Stephen E. Ambrose

German immigrants, farming in the Shenandoah Valley, had a much different relationship with the land from that of the planters of English stock. The Germans had not received huge grants of land from the English king or the royal governor; they had bought their land, in relatively small holdings. Coming from a country with a tradition of keeping the farm in the same family for generations, even centuries, they were in it for the long haul, not for quick profit. They cleared their fields of all trees and stumps, plowed deep to arrest erosion, housed their cattle in great barns, used manure as fertilizer, and practiced a precise scheme of crop rotation. They worked with their own hands, and their help came from their sons and relatives. No overseer, indentured servant, or slave—men with little interest in the precious undertaking of making a family farm—was allowed near their fields.