Another boy toward whose education Washington contributed was the son of Doctor James Craik—­the boy being a namesake.  Doctor Craik was one of Washington’s oldest and dearest friends.  He was born in Scotland two years before Washington saw the light at Wakefield, graduated from Edinburgh University, practised medicine in the West Indies for a short time and then came to Virginia.  He was Washington’s comrade in arms in the Fort Necessity campaign, was subsequently surgeon general in the Continental Army, and accompanied Washington to the Ohio both in 1770 and 1784.  He married Mariane Ewell, a relative of Washington’s mother, and resided many years in Alexandria.  He was a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon both as a friend and in a professional capacity, and Washington declared that he would rather trust him than a dozen other doctors.  Few men were so close to the great man as he, and he was one of the few who in his letters ventured to tell chatty matters of gossip.  Thus, in August, 1791, he wrote a letter apropos of the bad health of George A. Washington and added:  “My daughter Nancy is there [Mt.  Vernon] by way of Amusement awhile.  She begins to be tired of her Fathers house and I believe intends taking an old Batchelor Mr. Hn. for a mate shortly.”  Another young lady, Miss Muir, who had recently gone to Long Island for the benefit of the sea baths was “pursued” by a Mr. Donaldson and the latter now writes that “he shall bring back a wife with him.”  Craik was a thorough believer in Washington’s destiny, and in the dark days of the Revolution would hearten up his comrades by the story of the Indian chieftain met upon the Ohio in 1770 who had vainly tried to kill Washington in the battle of the Monongahela and had finally desisted in the belief that he was invulnerable.

To friends, family, church, education and strangers our Farmer was open-handed beyond most men of his time.  His manager had orders to fill a corn-house every year for the sole use of the poor in the neighborhood and this saved numbers of poor women and children from extreme want.  He also allowed the honest poor to make use of his fishing stations, furnishing them with all necessary apparatus for taking herring, and if they were unequal to the task of hauling the seine, assistance was rendered them by the General’s servants.

To Lund Washington he wrote from the camp at Cambridge:  “Let the hospitality of the house, with respect to the poor, be kept up.  Let no one go hungry away.  If any of this kind of people should be in want of corn, supply their necessaries, provided that it does not encourage them to idleness; and I have no objection to you giving my money in charity to the amount of forty or fifty pounds a year, when you think it well bestowed.  What I mean by having no objection is, that it is my desire it should be done.  You are to consider that neither myself nor wife is now in the way to do these good offices.”