smallholder

noun

1. A person who owns or runs a smallholding (small farm): a minor independent farmer.
2. (US, historical)A small slaveholder: a person who owns a smallholding (small plantation with slavery).

   “[…] 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.”