Patrician and Plebeian

Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, is also titled the origin and development of the social classes of the Old Dominion. The volume says that the bulk of the immigrants to Virginia were poor men seeking to better their condition in a new country, and that many came as indentured workers who signed contracts to work for four years in the tobacco fields in return for their passage across the Atlantic. The volume adds that Colonial Virginia has often been pictured as the land of the aristocratic planter, yet scant attention has been paid to the far more numerous middle class, which it calls the backbone of the colony.

The volume lists books of Col. Richard Lee, among others Wing's Art of Surveying and Virgil, and books found in the library of Ralph Wormeley, among others The Laws of Virginia and The Colledges of Oxford. An entry on The Present State of Virginia says that the work gives an entertaining and valuable picture of Virginia during the administration of Governor Spotswood.