smallholder

smallholder (plural smallholders)

1. A person who owns or runs a smallholding (small farm): a minor independent farmer.

   Hypernyms: farmer, farm holder, landholder, landowner

   Hyponym: dwarf-holder

2. (US, historical) A small slaveholder: a person who owns a smallholding (small plantation with slavery).

   Hypernyms: slaveholder, slaveowner

   • 2003, Wilma P. Dunaway, Slavery in the American Mountain South, page 9:

     […] planters and smallholders alike controlled far more than their equitable share of the political power and economic resources in their communities. Because small slaveholders aspired to be planters, they did not often align themselves with the political and economic interests of nonslaveholders.