Thomas Jefferson became a slaveholder by inheritance. From the summer of 1757, when his father wrote “I Give & Bequeath to my son Thomas my mulattoe Fellow Sawney,” he was entangled in an unjust legal and economic system that he was unable to escape or abolish. When he turned 21, in 1764, he gained legal title to about 30 human beings from his father's estate. Ten years later he received 135 more after the death of his father-in-law, John Wayles. From 1770 Jefferson lived on the top of an 867-foot mountain in Albemarle County, directing the operations of a tract that grew from almost 3,000 to over 5,000 acres. John Wayles's death transformed Monticello from an ordinary tobacco plantation to the central nerve center of a far-flung economic enterprise. After the division of Wayles's estate in January 1774, Jefferson had tripled his real property, to 14,000 acres of land and 187 human beings. He now owned four major plantations in Virginia's Piedmont: Monticello, Elk Hill and Willis Creek 40 miles to the east, and Poplar Forest 90 miles to the southwest. A rather well-to-do planter had instantly become one of the wealthiest men in the colony. Over his long life, during which he purchased fewer than 20 slaves, Jefferson considered himself the owner of more than 600 people - “those whom fortune has thrown on our hands.”