White tenant farmers in this region lived in cramped houses, worked with primitive tools, and endured pestilence, adverse weather, and volatile markets while laboring to support typically large families and then surrendering part of their meager profits to wealthy absentee landowners in a system that persisted for several hundred years. The Doncaster Dwelling, built in 1829 as a one-room house with a one-room addition, was the actual home of the last generation of white tenant farmers on the nearby 800 acre tract called Doncaster, where white tenant families worked the soil for almost 175 years after tobacco farming ended. Doncaster was first deeded in 1673, but its early owners never lived there, and until 1844 it passed through a continuous chain of wealthy nonresident landowners that included "the richest man in North America." In 1824, tenant farmer Andrew Collison, born about 1780, struggled to support eight children while using biblical farming methods such as having animals tread wheat to separate grain from straw; Hessian flies could destroy an entire wheat crop, and wheat prices fell from $2.50 to 75¢ per bushel after 1819. As the 19th century progressed, the era of extremely wealthy absentee landowners began to decline, and beginning in 1844 Doncaster was divided and sold to local independent farmers. Tenant farming, which replaced the slave-based tobacco system, allowed laborers to rent land for a share of crops or for cash, with terms depending on whether they owned equipment or bought their own seed and supplies; crop rent usually required one-fourth to one-third of the crop to go to the landlord, while sharecroppers, lacking equipment and capital furnished by landlords, typically received only 50 percent. In the 1830s, producing 100 bushels of wheat on 5 acres required about 250 to 300 labor-hours with a walking plow, brush harrow, hand broadcasting of seed, sickle, and flail; in the 1840s, factory-made machinery increased farmers' need for cash and encouraged commercial farming; and in the 1850s, producing 100 bushels of corn on 2 1/2 acres required about 75 to 90 labor-hours with a walking plow, harrow, and hand planting.