Gentry Township, Benton County, Arkansas
Gentry (from Old French ''genterie'', from ''gentil'', "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. Word similar to gentle [simple and decent] families ''Gentry'', in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates (see manorialism), upper levels of the clergy, and "gentle" families of long descent who in some cases never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms. The gentry largely consisted of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a Estate (land), country estate; some were gentleman farmers. In the United Kingdom, the term ''gentry'' refers to the landed gentry: the majority of the land-owning social class who typically had a coat of arms, but did not have a Peerages in the United Kingdom, peerage. The adjective "Patrician (post-Roman Europe), patrician" ("of or like a person of high social rank") describes in comparison other ...
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