FREEDOM TRAIL
In May 1844, George Bush, wife Isabella, and the couple’s five young sons packed their belongings and left Clay County, Missouri, to ride the Oregon Trail to its western end. Most Trail migrants came for free land in the flat fertile fields of the Willamette Valley. Born in Pennsylvania, Bush, in his mid-50s, had been a stockman in Tennessee and Illinois before settling in Missouri. He was going west to escape race hatred.
George Bush left no account of his life. Sources say he was the only son of Matthew Bush, an African-American said to have been brought from India by a Philadelphia merchant named Stevenson. His mother, an Irish-American maid, worked for the Stevensons.
