upset this tradition in the North. Although the Basques in the north chose to be "creative" with the new laws, it overall resulted in the breakup and ultimate financial ruin of many baserris. In practice the tradition of not breaking up baserris meant that the remaining children had to marry into another baserri, stay on the family baserri as unmarried employees or make their own way in the world (Iglesia o mar o casa real, "Church or sea or royal house"). A cortijo is a type of traditional rural habitat in the Southern half of Spain, including all of Andalusia and parts of Extremadura and Castile-La Mancha. Cortijos may have their origins in ancient Roman villas, for the word is derived from the Latin cohorticulum, a diminutive of cohors, meaning 'courtyard'. They are often isolated structures associated with a large family farming or livestock operation in the vast and empty adjoining lands. It would usually include a large house, together with accessory buildings such as workers' quarters, sheds to house livestock, granaries, oil mills, barns and often a wall enclosing a courtyard. The master of the cortijo or "señorito" would usually live with his family in a two-story building, while the accessory structures were for the labourers and their families —also known as "cortijeros". United States Before the founding of the United States, colonial powers such as Britain, France and the Netherlands made land grants to favored individuals in the original colonies that evolved into large agricultural estates that resembled the manors familiar to Europeans. In fact, founding fathers such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were the owners of large agricultural estates granted by colonial rulers and built large manor houses from which these estates were managed (e.g., Mount Vernon, Monticello). However, there were important distinctions. American agricultural estates often relied on slaves rather than tenant farmers or serfs which were common in Europe at the time. The owners of American agricultural estates did not have noble titles and there was no legally recognized political structure based on an aristocratic, land-owning class. As a result, this limited the development of a feudal or manorial land-owning system to just a few regions such as Tidewater and Piedmont Virginia, the Carolina Low Country, the Mississippi Delta, and the Hudson River Valley in the early years of the republic. Southern California (under Spanish and Mexican administration) also developed a primitive