Black Pioneers

Black Pioneers. The Bush Family settles in Washington Territory. , Black pioneer George Bush (c. 1790 – 1863) helped establish one of the first non-indigenous American settlements in Washington. George, his wife Isabella and others traveled the Oregon Trail to escape discrimination in Missouri, only to arrive in the Oregon Country to find that newly adopted racist laws prohibited Black settlers. Continuing north of the Columbia River, they established a farm called Bush Prairie near today’s Tumwater. The Bush family was known to be generous and welcoming, and are credited with saving the lives of fellow settlers with food from their farm during the famine of 1852. This first settlement drew other pioneers and furthered the claim of this area by the United States. In 1850, the U.S. Congress passed the Donation Land Claim Act which excluded people of African descent from making land claims. The Washington Territorial legislature successfully petitioned Congress to grant the Bush family the right to retain ownership of their farm. Bush died a landowner but still not allowed to vote. His son, William Owen Bush, served in the first Washington State legislature (1880 – 1890). William Owen Bush helped pass legislation establishing a college for the study of agricultural science, which later became Washington State University in Pullman, WA.