Did any minor titles of nobility exist for colonial holdings in the United States prior to the revolution?

by Hahahahahaga

Were there long term plans to create/expand this?

lord_mayor_of_reddit

The answer is, "sort of" and it varied from colony to colony. There were land-holdings which were, like today, hereditary, and in some places, these holdings entitled the owners to some privileges, but strictly speaking, they were not seen as titles of nobility or peerage back in the Old Country.

Let me start off by giving you a bit of background on New York, since that state is my area of expertise:

Before the English takeover, there was the title of "patroon" in the New Netherland colony, which is similar to the title of "lord" in England. These were given to owners of large areas of land, who usually had accumulated some wealth from somewhere, and then negotiated directly with one Indian tribe or another to make a land deal. (The land was actually being sold to the King who then in turn would issue a land patent/grant to the guy making the deal, but that takes us away from your question.)

Many of these patroons would turn around and sell parcels of land, but many others set up a more or less feudal system of tenant farming on their tracts of land. A farmer would pay rent on the land, and then a third ("let on thirds") or even a half ("let on halves") of the money earned for any crops or livestock raised on the land would be given to the patroon. The farmer would keep the rest.

Later, that system fell out of favor, and the tenant farmers would pay a "quit-rent". Essentially, it was a payment to the patroon so that the farmer didn't owe any earnings from crops or livestock, and was seen as a bit fairer since it was based on the fixed amount of land being rented instead of a variable amount of goods sold.

Anyway, back to your question.

These patroonships were carried over to the English crown once Great Britain took control of the renamed New York colony. Now called "manors", the land owners were often called "lords". It's important to note that the title of "lord" itself wasn't hereditary. Only the deed to the land was, and the owner of the land deed was "lord of the manor". Later, when the New York Assembly was first convened, many of these manors were granted a seat in the assembly. So as long as the lord of the manor held the deed to their large tracts of land, they were essentially given a seat of government. But again, it wasn't per se a title of nobility or peerage, and as far as I know, these manor-owners were only called "lords" informally. Certainly not at the same level as a Lord who has inherited a seat in the House of Lords.

Some of the more famous of these New York manors were the Philipsburg Manor (part of what is today the Bronx and much of Westchester County), the Van Cortlandt Manor (much of the rest of Westchester County), the Livingston Manor (much of Sullivan County), and the Rensselaerswyck Manor (near Albany, New York). Each of these had several male generations of a single family as owner of the manor, which, in turn, later gave them a seat in the Assembly.

As for the rest of the country: I'm not as much of an expert, but from what little I know, this system was uncommon, or at least abandoned much earlier, in the other Northern states, except in the border state of Maryland. Maryland had a similar system, though many of these manors were actually owned by lords back in England, such as the Barons Baltimore.

In other words, some English lords living in England owned land in North America, but that's not the same as granting noble titles to North American residents for owning land in North America. Such English lords were given lordships due to Old World landholdings, and not New World landholdings. The first Baron Baltimore got the title due to owning the Baltimore Manor in Ireland. He then bought land in Maryland, which was also named Baltimore Manor.

The Southern colonies of Virginia and Carolina had their own systems. In Virginia, many early landowners made a fortune by buying slaves and raising tobacco, and expanded their land-holdings until they owned large plantations. (See: First Families of Virginia and the family of Robert E. Lee, for example.) But these never had anything approaching titles of nobility, since Virginia's House of Burgesses was an elected (and not inherited) assembly from the very beginning.

In South and North Carolina, before they were split in two, there were eight Lords Proprietor which was a land-owning title that could be inherited. Similar to the system in Maryland, the holders of this title weren't locals but were wealthy investors back in England. It wasn't a title of nobility or peerage, per se, and was abolished in the early 1700s.

Were there long term plans to create/expand this?

As for long term plans to expand this, the straight answer is: no. In New York, before the American Revolution, the tenant farm laws were already controversial as being seen as an unfair relic of the Old World, and a number of local uprisings in reaction took place, including the Anti-Rent War of Dutchess County and the Great Rebellion in Westchester County, both occurring in 1766. After the war, many of the remaining New York manors were split up between heirs either voluntarily, or after being confiscated by the new American government because the lord had been a Loyalist on the British side.

The last New York manor in existence was that of Stephen Van Rensselaer III, lord of Rensselaerswyck Manor. Upon his death in 1839, his heirs tried to collect back-rent from tenant farmers, which led to the Anti-Rent War of 1844-45, which was the last nail in the coffin in the North.

I don't know much about what happened in Maryland, but I imagine, since these manors were largely owned by Englishmen back in England, any remaining landholdings were either confiscated or sold off.

In the South, while they were not lords by name, the large plantation owners, of course, were champions of slavery, leading to the Civil War. After the war, many of these plantations still operated something like tenant farms before they, too, largely dwindled away, but again, there was never any title of nobility involved.

Further sources:

https://books.google.com/books?id=bl4EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA96

https://books.google.com/books?id=1y1UfIAgexwC&pg=PA85

EDIT: Spacing.