This study seeks to investigate some of the problems raised but not resolved by research in the historical demography and social history of rural America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its first task is to make the linkage between farm family fertility and inhertance patterns. The study will build on the work of Easterlin and test his contention that patterns of farm family building had some relationship with the desire of parents to provide their children with a roughly equal inheritance. Such a research design will lead to a more thorough investigation of intergenerational relationships--in particular, questions which remain unanswered from research conducted on the family structure of the elderly in a similar period. The third major area of significance concerns the transmission of wealth: the effect land transaction had on rural social mobility; the workings of the land market; and how heirs in turn developed their own strategies for the distribution of estates.