My grandparents on both sides lived in shack-house farms, far from any villages or towns or whatnot. This was after the family moved to Canada. They had large families (6+ kids), which was also common, and I suspect it was hard to be lonely surrounded closely by so many brothers and sisters and daughters and sons.
As it happens, one set of my grandparents lived on a farm with no neighbors within something like four miles; the other, in a few small farming villages with maybe 32 people.