metayer

One who cultivates land for a share (usually half) of its yield, receiving stock, tools, and seed from the landlord.

The metayer furnishes his labour, his ignorance, and his good appetite; the proprietor supplying an exhausted soil[…]

A majority of the properties are so small as not to afford a subsistence to the proprietors, of whom, according to some computations, as many as three millions are obliged to eke out their means of support either by working for hire, or by taking additional land, generally on metayer tenure.

A surname.