(This is the resting place of the first US settler in Thurston County, Washington, one George Bush. No, not that George Bush. This one died [at home, of natural causes] during the American Civil War.
He was also African-American.
But he's most remembered for his legendary generosity, lending food, equipment, draught animals, and seed to subsequent arrivals – often not insisting on repayment. He's a man much commented in the historical record, having literally laid the foundations of his community, and of whom I've yet to encounter a single criticism.
He was also the subject of a concerted [though fortunately unsuccessful] effort to deprive him of his vote and property, based solely on his race.
Beside him lies his wife Isabella, here in Thurston County's first public cemetery – which was established on a parcel of the Bush homestead that they donated for the purpose.)
(I recently had to correct the Wikipedia entry for George Bush, earliest American settler in the Olympia area, which identified him as "the only 1812 veteran buried in Thurston County". Meet William Rutledge, friend and [still] neighbour of Bush, who arrived soon after. He lies about 10 feet away in the same pioneer graveyard, beneath a memorial placed by the N.S.U.S.D. 1812. [Interestingly, they did not afix such a plaque on Bush's stone, which is still the barely-legible 1863 original.])
(The plaque below lays out the basics of the story. This American chestnut [Castanea dentata] is thought to be the largest, and possibly the oldest, left on the continent, after an introduced blight killed off virtually all of the once-ubiquitous trees. Because they're not native to the North Coast, this one had no peers to communicate the fungus. Today it's the centrepiece of a cemetery in Tumwater, Washington.)
