Charles Burleigh Purvis very successful at Howard, and was credited with keeping the medical department running during the financial panic of 1873. He attended President Garfield after he was shot by an assassin on July 2, 1881. This made him the first black physician to attend to a sitting president. Later in 1881 he was appointed by President Chester Arthur to Surgeon-in-Charge at the Freedmen's hospital. Purvis was surgeon-in-charge at the Freedmen's Hospital from October 1, 1881, to 1894, and in that role was the first black person to head a hospital under civilian authority. In a letter from 1908, Purvis stated he
Charles J. Guiteau months later from infections related to the wounds. In January 1882, Guiteau was sentenced to death for the crime, and was hanged five months later. Guiteau was born in Freeport, Illinois, the fourth of six children of Jane August (née Howe) and Luther Wilson Guiteau, whose family was of French Huguenot ancestry. He moved with his family to Ulao, Wisconsin (near current-day Grafton), in 1850 and lived there until 1855, when his mother died. Soon after, Guiteau and his father moved back to Freeport. He inherited $1,000 ($ today) from his grandfather as a young man and went to Ann