The dictionary (dictionary.com) defines an entrepreneur as

a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, esp. a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.

I would define an entrepreneur as someone who makes their living through their own endeavors versus someone who earns a paycheck from someone else. Further, in most cases personal capital is at risk. My definition therefore includes farmers, investors, entertainers, doctors, commission-only salesman and others who have to manage the business side of their vocation and don't receive a paycheck. My father once told me that most of the Shanklands he knew were entrepreneurial. It is certainly true of my ancestry:

	While William's trade was a cooper, there is no record of him selling or making barrels for a living. He parlayed the purchase of a piece of property in MD which he sold for 7000 pounds of tobacco after he relocated and bought 300 acres of land in DE. Upon his death he was a gentleman farmer with nearly 3000 acres of land.
	John was a landowner and blacksmith in Lewes DE.
	David was a farmer, land owner, and Elder of the Lewes Presbyterian Church.
	John was a farmer and land owner in Nicholas CO, Kentucky.
	Andrew was a farmer, land owner and carpenter in KY and Brown CO, Illinois.
	James was a farmer and land owner in Cass CO, Illinois.
	While Howard spent some of his life working for others, he made his living during the Great Depression buying and selling stock. His last years were spent as a commission salesman selling cemetery lots.
	Co-founder, investor of Shankland Saxon Corporation, an archery manufacturing company. Founder and co-owner of Advance Business Corp., a direct mail advertising and literature fulfilment company. He pioneered the use of shared mail and published a weekly magazine called "Galaxy of Values" that eventually reached over one million households per week. Founder and owner of JHS Marketing, a small company he started after retirement to keep him active.
	Co-founder and partner of Shankland Enterprises, 1964. Founder and owner of Shankland Services and Sales, LTD 11.1.1976, a supermarket equipment sales and service company. I owned and operated this business for 25 years before selling it to an employee. Co-founder and partner of Elson Equipment Co., Atlanta, GA, another supermarket equipment company. Founder and partner of Chicago Repeater Inc. This business rented use on the 10 antennas we owned situated on top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, IL. Our customers were users of 800 megahertz trunked two-way radios. Commercial and residential building and land investor (landlord). Vacant land mortgage lender.
	Gordon and his partner purchased Advance Business from my father and increased the size of the business tenfold. They incorporated and merged "Galaxy of Values" into a distribution pattern that skipped advertising that was already included in the major Sunday papers. The Chicago Sun Times eventually bought them out. Gordon was killed in an automobile accident on the eve of his 50th birthday while developing his new business Geo Data.
	Rhonda started a successful wallpaper hanging business which she owned and operated for several years. Co-founder and partner of a restaurant in Rutland, Vermont. Working partner, A J Grace Land Company of Mendon VT and New Mexico.
	Robyn owned and operated for several years the Whistle Stop deli in LaGrange, IL.

This represents ten generations, in a direct line of descendancy, of entrepreneurial Shanklands!

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John N Shankland, October 2006