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 £45. In 1789 he rented a house on Prince Street from John Harper for £25, and in 1790 one on the same street for £35. He rented and occupied a house belonging to John Harper from 1793 to, or through, 1795, for £60, 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 something of an architect himself, with an eye to securing competent workmen near home, is said to have persuaded George Coryell to move to Alexandria. Here Coryell bought a lot on Duke Street in 1794 where he lived for many years. That Coryell set up in the building and lumber business and was very active is better documented, for this advertisement appeared in the Gazette for October 23, 1793:
George Coryell
Has for Sale
At His Board Yard on Mr. Mease's Wharf and
at his Dwelling House on Duke Street
Two-inch, Inch, and Half-Inch and
etc. Plank. House frames of different
sizes, Cypress shingles
Locust and Red Cedar Post
Scantling
Many houses in the town are perhaps his handiwork, but the statement that he built Dr. Craik's house or the frame cottage next door, which tradition says was his Alexandria home, is open to grave doubt. Recorded deeds at Fairfax Court House testify that the house and lot east of Dr. Craik were owned by Joseph Robinson, a sailmaker, in 1783, and used descriptively in a deed dated 1795. Coryell's lot was two doors below Dr. Craik's house (the lot now in possession of General Carl Spaatz) which Coryell purchased from William and Sarah Lyles of Prince Georges County, Maryland.
Coryell served for a time as clerk of the market and sealer of weights and measures. He did some repair jobs on Washington's town house. At the General's funeral, when Lieutenant Moss was unable to carry the heavy weight of the casket, George Coryell took his place as one of the pallbearers. He remained in Alexandria some fifty-odd years, returning to Coryell's Ferry a few years previous to his death in 1850, at the advanced age of ninety-one.
At the first auction of lots in Alexandria town in 1749, the lots numbered 80 and 81 were sold to Anne West. The trustees upset this sale in 1754, reselling lot No. 80 to George Mercer for £9 13s. 10d. and lot No. 81 going to Daniel Wilson for £10 10s. By devious transactions these parcels of land were divided and sold. The property of Dr. Craik was in the ownership of John Short, a watchmaker, in 1783. Due to inability to repay John Harper money advanced, Short, then of the borough of Norfolk, sold his house and lot at auction on November 30, 1789 to John Murry for £234. This same property was sold by John B. Murry and Patty, his wife, of the city and state of New York on October 26, 1795, along with another lot belonging to Murry, to Dr. James Craik for £1,500. Allowing for the additional lot, for which Murry had paid £71 10s. 1d. in 1787, and on which Dr. Craik's stable stood, for inflation and increase in value of property in Alexandria following the Revolution, this price of approximately $7,500 indicates beyond question that John Murry made very substantial improvements upon this property. It was subject to a ground rent of £11 forever, and it is only within the last few years that the present owners have satisfied this rent.
Rear of house and courtyard built by John B. Murray and bought by Dr. James Craik. The leanto at right replaces the frame building of Joseph Robinson, sailmaker
The house is a typical Alexandria town mansion. With three stories, dormer widows, of salmon brick, laid in Flemish bond, it faces the street as sturdily as when first built.