AN INTERESTING INCIDENT.–

25. April 2009 by admin.

In the freshman class at Harvard was a Washington, from Virginia, the nearest relative of the General, bearing the name of George, and born on the 22d of February. He was a youth of excellent principles, a communicant in the Episcopal Church, and respected and beloved by his classmates. On the breaking out of difficulties, he left Cambridge,–not for any sympathy with secession, for he was strongly against it in all his feelings,–but because he thought it his duty to be near his mother, a widow, whose estate lay in the threatened portion of the border. Soon afterwards others of his class left college to join the Massachusetts regiments.

A few days after the battle of Winchester, one of these young men, Lieutenant Crowninshield, of the Massachusetts Second regiment, was walking through the wards of the hospital, then filled with rebel officers and soldiers, and heard his familiar college nickname, “Crowny, Crowny,” called by a feeble voice from one of the beds. He went to it, and there–pale, faint, shot through the lungs by a musket ball–lay his classmate, young Washington. It is needless to say, that everything possible was done for him. The mother was allowed to take her son home for maternal care.

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