James Craik (1730 or 1731–6 February 1814), physician, was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. Some undocumented accounts identify him as the illegitimate son of Robert Craik and a mother whose name is not recorded. Educated as an army surgeon, possibly at the medical college of the University of Edinburgh (although his name does not appear on its roll of graduates), Craik may have spent a short time in the Caribbean before arriving in Virginia early in the 1750s. The earliest record of his presence in the colony is a grant to him on 16 May 1753 from the Northern Neck Proprietary of a lot in the town of Winchester.
Craik was an officer in George Washington's ill-fated march toward the Forks of the Ohio that resulted in the surrender of Fort Necessity in 1754 and was surgeon of the 1st Virginia Regiment that Washington commanded during much of the ensuing French and Indian War. In 1755 when Edward Braddock's expedition met disaster near the site of Fort Necessity, Craik attended the fatally wounded general. For his service in the war, Craik received warrants for bounty lands in the West, and in 1770 he accompanied Washington on a tour of the Ohio Valley to view the land set aside for the officers and soldiers.
Craik married Mariamne Ewell, of Prince William County, on or about 13 November 1760. They lived in Charles County, Maryland, where he owned a plantation, built a large house, and practiced medicine. They had six sons and three daughters. Craik was a founding member of the Charles County Committee of Correspondence formed on 14 June 1774 to coordinate the county's response with those of other Maryland counties to Parliament's passage of the Coercive, or Intolerable, Acts. In the spring of 1777 he accepted Washington's offered appointment as senior physician of the army hospital in the middle department. After a reorganization of the medical corps, early in October 1780 Craik became the third-ranking medical officer in the Continental army with the title of chief hospital physician and surgeon, and in March 1781 he advanced to second-ranking officer with the title of chief physician and surgeon. The doctor was the first to warn Washington early in 1778 that other officers were criticizing his conduct and perhaps plotting to supersede him. Craik served throughout the Revolutionary War, often at camp with Washington, and in 1781 attended wounded soldiers on the field at Yorktown, where the general charged him to give first attention to the marquis de Lafayette, should the Frenchman be wounded.
For forty years Craik was a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon, often with his wife and children. It is unlikely that any man who was not closely related to Washington had a longer friendship with him than Craik, who also served as the physician for the family and often treated Washington's laborers. In 1785 Washington promised to pay for the education of Craik's son George Washington Craik, who became Washington's private secretary in 1796. As president, Washington also appointed one of Craik's sons-in-law auditor of the Department of the Treasury.
Craik made another trip to the West with Washington in 1784. Sometime after the end of the Revolution he moved back to Virginia and lived in Alexandria. In 1787 Craik introduced Mason Locke Weems to Washington. Neither knew that Weems would later write one of the first and most adulatory book-length biographies of Washington, a book of the sort that Washington had told Craik in 1783 he did not want written during his lifetime. In October 1795 Craik purchased a large house in Alexandria, where he resided for another decade or more, and was a member of the same lodge of Freemasons as Washington. When Washington was called out of retirement in 1798 to command the army in the event of war with France, he named Craik physician general with the rank of lieutenant colonel. The war did not take place, and Craik retired effective 15 June 1800.
Craik had a distinguished career as a military doctor, but it was his relationship with Washington for which he is best known. The general described the doctor as "my compatriot in arms, and old & intimate friend" and bequeathed him a chair and bureau, items that Craik treasured and mentioned proudly when he made special provision in his will for which of his grandchildren would inherit the pieces of furniture "willed me by George Washington Esquire." Craik and his fellow physicians Gustavus Brown and Elisha Cullen Dick attended Washington on his deathbed in December 1799, and Craik and Dick wrote a brief memorandum on their treatment of Washington and on his death. The first detailed published account of Washington's death, it appeared in the Alexandria Times; and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser for 21 December 1799 and was reprinted early in the following year as an appendix to the published funeral sermon of Hezekiah N. Woodruff. Craik also attended Martha Dandridge Custis Washington during her final illness and death in May 1802.
A few years later Craik moved from Alexandria to his Fairfax County plantation, Vaucluse Farm, where he spent the last years of his life. At the time he wrote his will in June 1813, he owned thirty-three slaves, town lots in Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, and land in Kentucky and Maryland as well as in Virginia. James Craik died at Vaucluse Farm on 6 February 1814 and was buried probably in the family cemetery on the plantation, although a memorial stone erected in 1928 in the burial ground of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria appears to suggest that he was buried there.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Timothy Alden, A Collection of American Epitaphs and Inscriptions, with Occasional Notes (1814), 5:91–94, and James Thacher, American Medical Biography (1828), 238–239, both derived from Alexandria Gazette obituary; other biographies in F. L. Brockett, The Lodge of Washington: A History of the Alexandria Washington Lodge, No. 22, A. F. and A. M. of Alexandria, Va., 1783–1876 (1876), 112–113 (with birth year of 1730), J. M. Toner, "A Sketch of the Life and Character of Dr. James Craik, of Alexandria, Va.," Medical Society of Virginia Transactions (1879), 95–105, James Evelyn Pilcher, The Surgeon Generals of the Army of the United States of America (1905), 18–24, and Wyndham B. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century (1931), esp. 301–307 (frontispiece silhouette portrait); undocumented marriage date in Horace Edwin Hayden, Virginia Genealogies: A Genealogy of the Glassell Family… (1891), 341; reminiscences by grandson in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 46 (1938): 135–137, 143–145; numerous references in Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George Washington (1976–1979); numerous references and letters in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series (1983–1995), place of birth on 5:453, Philander D. Chase, W. W. Abbot, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series (1985– ), W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series (1992–1997), Dorothy Twohig, W. W. Abbot, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series (1987– ), and W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Retirement Series (1998–1999), first quotation on 4:486; Craik letters in George Washington Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Papers of the Continental Congress, RG 360, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., Bartholomew Booth Papers, Maryland State Archives, and several collections, Virginia Museum of History and Culture; Northern Neck Grants, L:4 (first record in Virginia), Record Group 4, Library of Virginia; Craik and Elisha Cullen Dick, Appendix to Hezekiah N. Woodruff, Sermon, Occasioned by the Death of Gen. George Washington (1800), 14–16; Thomas M. Boyd, "Death of a Hero, Death of a Friend: George Washington's Last Hours," Virginia Cavalcade 33 (1984): 136–143 (portrait on 139); Peter R. Henriques, The Death of George Washington: He Died as He Lived (2000); will in Fairfax Co. Will Book, K-1:180–184 (second quotation on 181), and inventory of Vaucluse Farm in Fairfax Co. Will Book, L-1:158; birth year of 1727 and variant death date of 4 Feb. 1814 on 1928 memorial stone at Alexandria Presbyterian Church, supposed to be a replication of a table stone destroyed during the Civil War; obituary in Alexandria Gazette, Commercial and Political, 10 Feb. 1814 (died "in the 84th year of his age"); death notice in Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 11 Feb. 1814 (died "in the 84th year of his age").
Frontispiece silhouette in Wyndham B. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Brent Tarter.
How to cite this page:
Brent Tarter, "James Craik (1730 or 1731–1814)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006, rev. 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Craik_James, accessed [today's date]).
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