The population generally was so scattered that, as has been remarked, a man could not see his neighbor without a telescope or be heard by him without firing a gun.
A large part of the settled land was divided up into great estates, though there were many small farms.

Some of these estates had been acquired for little or nothing by Cavalier favorites of the colonial governors.

A few were perfectly enormous in size, and this was particularly the rule on the "Northern Neck," the region in which Mount Vernon was situated.

The holding of Lord Thomas Fairfax, the early friend and patron of Washington, embraced more than a score of modern counties and contained upward of five million acres.

The grant had been made by Fairfax's grandfather, Lord Culpeper, the coproprietor and Governor of Virginia.
The Virginia plantation of 1760 was much more sufficient unto itself than was the same plantation of the next century when methods of communication had improved, articles from the outside world were easier to obtain, and invention was beginning to become "the mother of necessity." Many of the large plantations, in fact, bore no small resemblance to medieval manors.