Background
Andrew Craigie was born on June 07, 1743 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was one of the three children of Andrew and Elizabeth Craigie.
Financier speculator apothecary
Andrew Craigie was born on June 07, 1743 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was one of the three children of Andrew and Elizabeth Craigie.
Andrew was educated in the Boston Latin School. Information is wanting as to whether he was trained as an apothecary or as a physician, but he was known as a man skilled in medicine.
Craigie's public career began on April 30, 1775, when the Massachusetts Committee of Safety appointed him to take care of the medical stores of the Colony. On May 14 he was empowered to impress beds, bedding, and other hospital necessities. He was present at the battle of Bunker Hill and assisted in taking care of the sick and wounded. Shortly afterward he was appointed by the Provincial Congress medical commissary and apothecary to the army of Massachusetts.
He took part in the siege of Boston, and on August 3, 1775 was given charge of the medical store at Watertown, Massachusetts. He was probably the first to fill the office of Continental apothecary, created in July 1775. With the exception of a few months, he served either in this office or in that of apothecary general (created in February 1777) during the entire Revolutionary War.
By an act of the Continental Congress, October 27, 1779, the apothecary general was given the military rank of lieutenant-colonel. The first pharmaceutical laboratory in the United States was established during Craigie’s term of office, and the first Pharmacopoeia in America, published by Dr. William Brown, also came into existence during this time. In 1780 Craigie was “well known to the whole army as a surgeon of the highest character. ” He served as apothecary general on the general staff to the end of the war and was mustered out about November 12, 1783.
During his connection with the army he acquired a large fortune by purchasing government certificates and by other speculations. For a time after returning to private life he engaged in the wholesale apothecary trade, but soon broadened the scope of his activity. He was one of the directors of the first United States Bank, and maintained a voluminous correspondence. The American Antiquarian Society has about 600 of his letters bound in three large volumes.
In 1791 Craigie purchased the Vassall house in Cambridge, where General Washington had his headquarters during the siege of Boston. This house came to be known as the Craigie Mansion, and later as the Craigie-Longfellow house. Craigie laid out gardens, built a greenhouse and an ice-house, and maintained a princely bachelor establishment which became a social center. The merchant princes enjoyed his hospitality. Entertainments were on a large scale, and after Craigie's marriage to the beautiful Elizabeth Nancy Shaw, the social functions became even more brilliant. Royalty was entertained.
Craigie continued in his speculations, buying large properties around Cambridge and built the bridge which was the inspiration of Longfellow’s poem, “I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight. ” After a time, however, his glory waned, and he became so heavily involved in debt that he was unable to leave his property for fear of arrest.
Andrew Craigie was the first apothecary general of the United States and a former owner of the Craigie-Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He participated in the American Revolutionary War and established a manufacturing laboratory for large-scale manufacture and distribution of medical supplies.
Craigie was a vestryman of Christ’s Church.
Craigie was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati.
Andrew Craigie was married to Elizabeth Nancy. Mrs. Craigie had all the luxury and social prestige money could provide, but it did not bring her happiness and later she became estranged from her husband. She survived her husband many years, dying in 1841.
