Samuel P. Bush
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Samuel Prescott Bush (October 4, 1863 Brick Church, New Jersey – February 8, 1948 Columbus, Ohio) was the father of Senator Prescott Bush, grandfather of President George H. W. Bush, and great-grandfather of President George W. Bush. (It should be noted that Bush's obituary in the New York Times, February 8, 1948, says that he was born October 13, 1864 on Staten Island, New York.)
Bush was the son of Harriet Fay and the Rev. James Smith Bush. He graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1884, and married Flora Sheldon on June 20, 1894. They had four children: James Bush, Prescott Bush, Mrs. Frank House, and Mrs. Stewart Clement.
Bush was president (c 1906-1927) of Buckeye Steel Castings of Columbus, Ohio, which (among other things) made railway parts for the Harrimans. The two families were closely associated at least until the end of World War II.
He was the first president of National Manufactures Association, and cofounder of Scioto Country Club and Columbus Academy. He was an avid sports buff.
In the spring of 1918, Bush became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms, and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board of Bernard Baruch - a close associate of E.H. Harriman and Clarence Dillon - with national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with weapons companies including Remington (at the time controlled by Percy Rockefeller- who along with Averill Harriman took time to arrange for Harriman's and Bush's sons Bunny Harriman and Prescott Bush to be admitted to Yale's Skull and Bones in 1916.) Remington dominance of ammunition and small arms contracts during World War I continued during Bush's government service and many years beyond.
He lost his wife Flora Sheldon on September 4, 1920 in Narragansett, Rhode Island when she was hit by a car. He remarried to Martha Bell Carter of Milwaukee.
Samuel Bush was a close advisor to President Herbert Hoover.
During the height of American isolationism, a Senate Munitions Inquiry, often called the Nye Committee after its chairman, Senator Gerald Nye, critically examined the military-industrial complex of government agencies, corporations, labor unions, and banking. The Nye Committee has been portrayed as a naive isolationist search for evil arms dealers ("Merchants of Death") who caused wars, underplaying the social, intellectual, political, and cultural currents of the 1930s which have more recently been re-examined (see reference Coulter). The Committee was formed in August 1933. It examined World War I military-industrial finances in January and February 1936. In spite of this second historical connection, most of the records and correspondence of Samuel P. Bush's arms-related work with the government were destroyed at the National Archives, in order 'to save space'.
Bush is interred at Green Lawn Cemetery, Columbus, Ohio. [1] (http://www.forgottenoh.com/Greenlawn/greenlawn.html)
See also
External Links
- Samuel Bush residence (http://ghmchs.org/tour-pages/st-raphael.html)
- Buckeye Certificates (http://www.scripophily.net/bucsteelcasc1.html) (some history of company)
- Evil Empire (http://www.unclenicks.net/canvas/evil_empire.html) probably quoting Tarpley & Chaitkin The unauthorized biography (http://www.tarpley.net/bush1.htm)
Reference
- Prof. Matthew Ware Coulter, The Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930s: Beyond the Merchants of Death, 1997.