George Washington, a Founding Father of the United States, was a slaveowner who became uneasy with the institution of slavery but only provided for the emancipation of the people he kept in slavery after his death. Slavery was ingrained in the economic and social fabric of colonial Virginia, and Washington inherited his first ten slaves at the age of eleven on the death of his father in 1743. In adulthood his personal slaveholding grew through inheritance, purchase and natural increase.