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George Washington Bush
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Washington Bush (1779-1863) was one of the first American settlers and the first African American settler in what would later become the State of Washington.
In 1844, Bush and his family (along with Michael Simmons and others) left Missouri, heading west on the Oregon Trail, but by the time they reached the Oregon Country, Oregon had passed laws preventing African Americans from owning land. As a result, Bush and his party travelled north across the Columbia River, into territory that at the time was claimed by both the United States and Great Britain, and established a settlement, named Bush Prairie, near modern-day Olympia, Washington.
The Oregon Treaty of 1846 ended the joint administration north of the Columbia, placing Bush Prairie firmly in the United States. Ironically, by staking an American claim to the area, Bush and his party had also brought Oregon's African American exclusion laws, clouding the title to their land. When the Washington Territory was formed in 1853, one of the first actions of the Territorial Legislature in Olympia was to ask Congress to give the Bushes unambiguous ownership of their land, which it did in 1855.
- State owes much to George W. Bush -- a black pioneer from Seattle Post-Intelligencer (February 5, 2002)
- HistoryLink.org the online encyclopedia of Washington State History
- Official Website of the City of Tumwater, WA
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