smallholder

smallholder (plural smallholders)

1. A person who owns or runs a smallholding, a minor independent farmer.
2. (US, historical) A small slaveholder, a person who owns a smallholding.
   • 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.

• (farmer): dwarf-holder