s disrupted by revolt and Washington appointed
commander in chief of the Continental forces, he at once had Dr. Craik
appointed Surgeon-General in the Continental Army. In 1777 he was made
Assistant Director General of the Hospital of the Middle Department of
the Army. Throughout the war he was part of Washington's military
family.

At Cornwallis' surrender, Dr. Craik was in command of the hospital corps
at Yorktown and present on that occasion. It was his painful duty to
attend the fatally injured Hugh Mercer at Princeton, to dress the wounds
of La Fayette at Brandywine, to nurse during his last hours young Jacky
Custis, only surviving child of Martha Washington. It was Dr. Craik who
learned of the Conway Cabal in 1777 and warned Washington of the
conspiracy to remove him from command. To him we also owe the Indian
legend of Washington's immortality. When Braddock was defeated and
killed at Monongahela, Washington, with four bullets through his coat
and two horses shot from under him, the chosen target of the Indian
chief and his braves, was unharmed, and the Indians believed him immune
to poisoned arrow or blunderbuss.

It is said that Washington persuaded Dr. Craik to move to Alexandria
after the Revolution. We find him renting a house on Fairfax Street from
one Robert Lyles in 1788 for L45. In 1789 he rented a house on Prince
Street from John Harper for L25, and in 1790 one on the same street for
L35. He rented and occupied a house belonging to John Harper from 1793
to, or through, 1795, for L60, a residence which has been so closely
associated with Dr. Dick that it bears a memorial tablet in his memory.

In October 1795, Dr. Craik bought the property on Duke and Water (now
Lee) Street, which he occupied for several years, and owned until 1810.
Tradition, in this case false, says the house was built by George
Coryell, and the story of how he came to Alexandria as a builder is a
very interesting anecdote. On one of Washington's trips to Philadelphia
after the Revolution, the story goes, he admired a well designed and
constructed gate at the house of Benjamin Franklin, and inquired the
name of the artisan. It was the work of one George Coryell of Coryell's
Ferry. The young man's father, Cornelius Coryell, had acted as guide
during the New Jersey campaign and the family had rowed Washington
across the Delaware in that surprise attack upon the Hessians on
Christmas Night, 1776. The General, interested in building, and