BUSH, A. J.

BUSH

Posted By: Volunteer (email)
Date: 6/2/2005 at 13:42:21

Biography reproduced from page 471 of the History of Kossuth and Humboldt Counties, Iowa published in 1884:

A. J. Bush, an energetic farmer of Fenton township, was born in Lewis Co., N. Y., July 18, 1829. He is the son of Luther and Unice Bush, natives of the eastern States. He remained at home with his parents until the spring of 1852, when he went to California, overland, with four yoke of oxen. He left home May 1, and got to his journey’s end the last of August. While there he worked in the mines, and in 1857 he returned to New York city on the steamboat Arrazebee from San Francisco to the Isthmus, thence on the Tennessee to New York city, where he landed in December, 1857, where he took the train and came to Sterling, Ill., and worked at his trade, as mason and plasterer, until the spring of 1864. He then went to Montana with a team with some other emigrants, and while crossing Powder river valley, they were attacked by the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, and had to fight for one whole day, losing five men (killed); the Indians lost thirteen. While in Montana he worked in the mines. In 1868 he returned to Sterling, Ill., where he followed raising and moving buildings until 1872, when he came to Kossuth Co., Iowa, and purchased the southeast quarter of section 35, township 97 range 27, college land grant in Fenton township, for which he paid $5.40 per acre, cash. He has eighty acres under cultivation. He has a good two story frame building on the same, also a good barn. He has a grove of nine acres of timber around his house and barn. Mr. Bush is a single man, never having been married. Politically he is a greenbacker.