George Leaycraft served in the Second Continental Artillery Regiment from 1777 to 1783. Following the war, Leaycraft returned to New York City, where he became a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. In 1789, he owned and operated a house of entertainment and outdoor garden. During the early 1790s, Leaycraft was one of several New York Continental Army officers who petitioned the federal government for financial relief, and in 1793 he offered his services as a privateer to Edmond Charles Genet. By 1799, Leaycraft captained a vessel engaged in the domestic coasting trade (Heitman, Register description begins Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April, 1775, to December, 1793, new ed., Washington, D.C., 1914 description ends , 344; David Franks, The New-York Directory [New York, 1786], 72; New York Daily Advertiser, 2 June 1789; Mathew Carey, ed., American Museum, or, Universal Magazine, 2 vols. [Philadelphia, 1792], 2:12; New-York Gazette and General Advertiser, 19 Nov. 1799; William R. Casto, Foreign Affairs and the Constitution in the Age of Fighting Sail [Columbia, S.C., 2006], 103).

Leaycraft’s younger brother, William Leaycraft, also served in the Second Continental Artillery Regiment and was the inspector of the customs for the port of New York from the late 1790s through the early 1800s (Heitman, Register description begins Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April, 1775, to December, 1793, new ed., Washington, D.C., 1914 description ends , 344; ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1832-61, 38 vols. description ends , Miscellaneous, 1:270).