At the public library in Boston can be seen the gold medal presented by Congress to George Washington for his services in expelling the British forces from Boston on the 17th of March, 1776. It is the only gold medal given by Congress to General Washington. It remained in the Washington family a hundred years, becoming the property of George Steptoe Washington, son of Samuel Washington, eldest brother of the General, soon after the latter's death. The next owner was Dr. Samuel Walter Washington, eldest son of George Steptoe Washington. When the Doctor died, at Hasewood, Virginia, in 1831, the medal became the property of his widow, who finally transferred it to her only son, George Lafayette Washington, who had married the daughter of her brother, Rev. John B. Clemson, of Claymont, Delaware. George Lafayette Washington died six or seven years ago, leaving the medal to his widow, Mrs. Ann Bull Washington, of whom it was obtained by fifty citizens of Boston, who subscribed a sum of money in the total sufficiently large to induce the widow to part with it. While the civil war was in progress George Lafayette Washington lived eleven miles from Harper's Ferry, on the main road to Winchester, where the belligerents were continually ousting one another's forces. Lest any mishap should befall the medal, it was placed, with its original case of green sealskin lined with velvet, in a wrapping of cotton, deposited in a box, and buried in the dry cellar of the venerable mansion where Washington was wont to pass many pleasant holidays. The losses sustained by the last individual owner during the war, the fear of losing the medal by theft, fire, or accident, and the sense of relief expected to follow the knowledge that the medal was held in a secure place, induced the Widow Washington to part with it.