George Washington Bush - Bush Prairie

Bush Prairie

The Bushes and the other five families established a settlement, named Bush Prairie, at the southernmost tip of Puget Sound in what is now Tumwater, Washington. Bush and Michael Simmons built the area's first gristmill and sawmill, and Bush helped finance Simmons' logging company.

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 Black American exclusion laws, clouding the title to their land; these laws would not apply if the territory were under the British Empire. 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.

According to the Oregon Trail History Library,

The Bush-Simmons Party is credited by some historians as having been in large part responsible for bringing the land north of the Columbia River—the present-day state of Washington—into the United States. They established a presence that attracted other settlers and strengthened the American claim to the area in later debates between Great Britain and the United States over partitioning the Oregon Country.

George Washington Bush lived out the rest of his life in Washington. Bush died on April 5, 1863, and is the only veteran of the War of 1812 buried in Thurston County, Washington. Isabella James Bush died September 12, 1866.