Fair Play society was composed of Scotch-Irish (48.75 per cent), English (20 per cent), German (15 per cent), Scots (6.25 per cent), Irish (5 per cent), Welsh (2.5 per cent) and French (2.5 per cent) settlers.[1] Due to the pioneering conditions under which all of these national stock groups developed their "improvements," economic privilege was rather difficult to attain. Furthermore, even after the legislature granted pre-emption in the act of December, 1784, the grants were limited to 300 acres.[2] In consequence of this, massive holdings were impossible to maintain legally, as the customary holdings of two to three hundred acres indicate in the tax lists for the years after 1784.[3] In fact, the tax lists suggest that absentee-owners or persons outside the actual geographic limits of the Fair Play territory who participated with the Fair Play settlers were the only ones to possess 700 to 1,000 acres or more.[4] This fact, combined with the "subsistence farming" which all of the area settlers pursued, suggests a relatively comparable economic status for the members of the Fair Play society. Consequently, social status was not necessarily dependent upon economic status. Social status on this frontier depended more upon achieved status than ascribed status. This may have been an influence of the Scotch-Irish, who judged, and thus classified, a neighbor by the size and condition of his dwelling, the care of his farm, the work done by the women in the family, his personal characteristics and morality, and his diversions.[5] Journalists, pension claimants, and the operative, although unwritten, code of the Fair Play men all give corroborative evidence in this regard.[6] Of all these criteria, personal character and morality seemed to have been most important. The Scotch-Irish, who, like the people of other national stocks, accepted social classes as the right ordering of society, shifted their emphasis, as a result of the frontier experience, from family heritage to individual achievement.[7] Intermarriages provide a further key to the social relationships of the Fair Play settlers. If a small sample is any indication, the cases of intermarriages among the various national stock groups were relatively high, with better than one-third of the marriages sampled falling within this classification.[8] The fact that the Scotch-Irish frequently married within their own group was probably due to their being more "available" in terms of numbers. Industry and good character were the prime criteria for selecting a frontier mate, as Dunaway points out.[9]