A Negro Pioneer in the West
Mr. Monroe N. Work invites attention to the fact that in an issue of December 23d, 1920, the Advertiser Journal of Kent, Washington, ran the following story:
"The best and largest yield of wheat ever exhibited," grown in western Washington. It sounds like a real estate folder. And yet at the World's Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia in 1876, W. O. Bush, son of George Bush, one of the first settlers on Puget Sound, won the gold premium for wheat he grew on Bush Prairie, just south of Olympia; to this day the wheat is preserved in the Smithsonian Institute.
This record of great wheat yield is a part of the history of one of the families that came to the Northwest and had that quality that made them successful here. George Bush was the first colored man to come to this part of the country, the forerunner of the large number of useful citizens of his race who have followed with the increasing population. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1814, and with his wife from Tennessee started west in 1844.
Before coming west with his family, Bush had made a trip to this country with a number of companions, coming north along the coast from the Mexican border and suffering from the innumerable hardships of the trail, hunger and Indians. He must have liked the prospects, for it was only a short time later that we find him again headed in this direction in company with a number of other hardy pioneers.
The character that made him face the privations of immigration ingratiated him with his companions. There was an unwritten law in Oregon at that time that no colored people should be allowed to settle in that territory. When the group of which Bush was a member approached the Columbia river country and learned of the rule it was decided that if any one attempted to molest Bush all of the members of the company would fight to protect him.
The practice in Oregon was to whip the colored man and if he left after the whipping it was all right and nothing further was done, but if he did not take advantage of the opportunity to escape he was whipped again and again until he either left or died.
There is not any record of an attempt being made to molest Bush, who, with his companions, stayed at the Dalles for several months and later at Washougal at the mouth of the Cowlitz. The following year—1845—they came on to Puget Sound and settled at the head of Budds Inlet at the falls of the DesChutes and founded the town of New Market, now Tumwater.
Those who made up this party were Michael T. Simmons, James McAllister, David Kindred, Gabriel Jones and Bush. The latter decided not to settle right in Tumwater and went back onto the prairie land about four miles and took up a donation claim of 640 acres. It was on that claim that the prize wheat was grown by his oldest son thirty-two years later. There on that claim Bush died in 1863, while the great war for the freedom of his race was being waged. His widow followed him two years later.
Of their six sons, the state has heard a great deal. The eldest, W. O. Bush, was born before the couple left Missouri on their way west, and got the hard training of the pioneer. He took to farming and that he worked the prairie land where his father had settled for all it was worth is shown by the crop he took to Philadelphia. The soil of that section is a black sandy loam on a gravel base. The soil is not too thick in some parts and has a tendency to drain, particularly during the hot, dry summer.
Shortly after the formation of the state Bush was elected a member of the legislature and served two terms during 1890 and 1892. His record in the law-making body was an honorable one and that he was highly respected by the people of Thurston county was shown when they sent him to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 to look after the county's agricultural exhibit.