George Washington (1732 - 1799). George Washington was an American political leader, military general, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Previously, he led Patriot forces to victory in the nation's War for Independence. He presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which established the U.S. Constitution and a federal government. Washington has been called the Father of His Country for his manifold leadership in the formative days of the new nation. Washington received his initial military training and command with the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War. He was later elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and was named a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he was appointed Commanding General of the Continental Army. He commanded American forces, allied with France, in the defeat and surrender of the British during the Siege of Yorktown, and resigned his commission in 1783 after the signing of the Treaty of Paris. Washington played a key role in the adoption and ratification of the Constitution and was then elected president by the Electoral College in the first two elections. He implemented a strong, well-financed national government while remaining impartial in a fierce rivalry between cabinet members Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. During the French Revolution, he proclaimed a policy of neutrality while sanctioning the Jay Treaty. He set enduring precedents for the office of president, including the title President of the United States, and his Farewell Address is widely regarded as a pre-eminent statement on republicanism. Washington owned slaves for labor and trading, and supported measures passed by Congress protecting slavery, in order to preserve national unity. He later became troubled with the institution of slavery and freed his slaves in a 1799 will. He endeavored to assimilate Native Americans into Western culture, but responded to their hostility in times of war. He was a member of the Anglican Church and the Freemasons, and he urged broad religious freedom in his roles as general and president. Upon his death, he was eulogized as first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. He has been memorialized by monuments, art, geographical locations, stamps, and currency, and many scholars and polls rank him among the greatest American presidents. Further information: Ancestry of George Washington and British America Washington's great-grandfather John Washington immigrated in 1656 from Sulgrave, England to the British Colony of Virginia where he accumulated 5,000 acres of land, including Little Hunting Creek on the Potomac River. George Washington was born February 22, 1732 at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and was the first of six children of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. By English common law Washington was a naturalized subject of the King, as were all others born in the English colonies. His father was a justice of the peace and a prominent public figure who had three additional children from his first marriage to Jane Butler. The family moved to Little Hunting Creek, in 1735, then to Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1738. When Augustine died in 1743, Washington inherited Ferry Farm and ten slaves; his older half-brother Lawrence inherited Little Hunting Creek and renamed it Mount Vernon. Washington did not have the formal education that his elder brothers received at Appleby Grammar School in England, but he did learn mathematics, trigonometry, and surveying, and he was talented in draftsmanship and map-making. By early adulthood, he was writing with considerable force and precision. However, his writing displayed little wit or humor. As a young man in pursuit of admiration, status, and power, he had a tendency to attribute his shortcomings and failures on someone else's ineffectuality. Washington often visited Mount Vernon and Belvoir, the plantation that belonged to Lawrence's father-in-law William Fairfax. Fairfax became Washington's patron and surrogate father, and Washington spent a month in 1748 with a team surveying Fairfax's Shenandoah Valley property. He received a surveyor's license the following year from the College of William & Mary; Fairfax appointed him surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia, and he thus familiarized himself with the frontier region. He resigned from the job in 1750 and had bought almost 1,500 acres in the Valley, and he owned 2,315 acres by 1752.