The bottom third owned no land and verged on poverty. Many were recent arrivals, recently released from indentured servitude. In some districts near present-day Washington DC, 70 percent of the land was owned by a handful of families, and three fourths of the whites had no land at all. Large numbers of Irish and German Protestants had settled in the frontier districts, often moving down from Pennsylvania. Tobacco was not important here; farmers focused on hemp, grain, cattle, and horses. Entrepreneurs had begun to mine and melt the local iron ores.