That’s certainly a view you don’t hear much in Virginia.
The initial settlers were a mix of dead broke younger sons and rabble. Few survived and the real backbone of the colonial gentry only arrived after tobacco cultivation had created a basis for real prosperity. George Washington’s first ancestor to settle in the colony was a man who was a supercargo on merchant ships trading to Virginia and therefore came to understand the economic structure of the colony. He was a son of the Washington clan settled in London whose prosperity was based on being trading merchants, not land lords.