Definition of "yeomanry" []

• The class of yeomen; small freeholding farmers. (noun)
• A British volunteer cavalry force organized in 1761 to serve as a home guard and later incorporated into the Territorial Army. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The perpetuation of a sturdy and independent yeomanry is one of the best guarantees we have for the perpetuation of democracy; and my faith is that democracy is the only system of government that is destined to last, the only system which contains within itself the seeds of continuity and life."
• "True to his word, Jefferson started the University of Virginia to provide free higher education to the yeomanry, which is what the middle class was called back in the 1700s."
• "A writer already quoted refers to the poor whites of the ante-bellum South as constituting part of the last grade of a class distinguishable from both the unpropertied and the influential landowners, which might be termed a "yeomanry," but he notices their tendency to sink rather than rise in the social order. 16"