James Smith Bush
American attorney, Episcopal priest, and religious writer
title: "James Smith Bush" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1825-births", "1889-deaths", "bush-family", "yale-college-alumni", "19th-century-american-episcopal-priests", "american-unitarians", "converts-to-unitarianism", "lawyers-from-san-francisco", "clergy-from-orange,-new-jersey", "lawyers-from-orange,-new-jersey", "people-from-staten-island", "religious-leaders-from-rochester,-new-york", "19th-century-american-politicians", "lawyers-from-rochester,-new-york", "writers-from-rochester,-new-york", "burials-at-sleepy-hollow-cemetery"] description: "American attorney, Episcopal priest, and religious writer" topic_path: "law" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Smith_Bush" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary American attorney, Episcopal priest, and religious writer ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| honorific_prefix | The Reverend |
| name | James Smith Bush |
| other_names | James Smith |
| image | JSBush.jpg |
| caption | Bush in 1876 |
| birth_date | |
| birth_place | Rochester, New York, U.S. |
| death_date | |
| death_place | Ithaca, New York, U.S. |
| parents | Obadiah Bush |
| Harriet Smith | |
| spouse | {{plainlist |
| children | 4, including Samuel |
| relatives | George H. W. Bush |
| (great-grandson) | |
| George W. Bush | |
| (great-great-grandson) | |
| See Bush family | |
| Edward Delafield Smith | |
| (cousin) | |
| :: |
| honorific_prefix = The Reverend | name = James Smith Bush | other_names = James Smith | image = JSBush.jpg | caption = Bush in 1876 | birth_date = | birth_place = Rochester, New York, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = Ithaca, New York, U.S. | death_cause = | parents = Obadiah Bush Harriet Smith | spouse = {{plainlist|
- Sarah Freeman
- Harriet Eleanor Fay | children = 4, including Samuel | relatives = George H. W. Bush (great-grandson) George W. Bush (great-great-grandson) See Bush family Edward Delafield Smith (cousin)
James Smith Bush (June 15, 1825 – November 11, 1889) was an American attorney, Episcopal priest, religious writer, and the direct ancestor of the Bush political family. He was the father of business magnate Samuel P. Bush, grandfather of former U.S. Senator Prescott Bush, great-grandfather of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush and great-great-grandfather of former Texas Governor and President George W. Bush and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Biography
James Smith Bush was born on June 15, 1825 in Rochester, New York, to Obadiah Newcomb Bush and Harriet Smith (1800–1867). In 1851, his father returned from the California Gold Rush after two years in order to reclaim his family and bring them west. He died on February 9, 1851 aboard a ship while on his return voyage in Itcha, New York and was presumably buried at sea. He was 54 years old.
Yale College
Bush entered Yale College in 1841 (class of 1844), the first of what would become a long family tradition, as his grandsons Prescott Sheldon Bush and James Bush, great-grandsons George H. W. Bush, Prescott Sheldon Bush, Jr., Jonathan Bush and William H. T. Bush, great great-grandson George W. Bush, and great-great-great-granddaughter Barbara are all Yale alumni. He is accounted among the over 300 Yale alumni and faculty who supported in 1883 the founding of Wolf's Head Society. After Yale, he returned to Rochester and studied law, joining the bar in 1847.
First marriage
His first wife, Sarah Freeman, lived in Saratoga Springs. They married in 1851, but she died 18 months later during childbirth.
This prompted Bush to study divinity with the rector of the Episcopal church there. Ordained a deacon in 1855, he was appointed rector at the newly organized Grace Church in Orange, New Jersey.
Second marriage
On February 24, 1859, he married Harriet Eleanor [Fay], daughter of Samuel Howard and Susan [Shellman] Fay, at Trinity Church, New York City. Fay was born in Savannah, Georgia. Her father is the sixth generation removed to John Fay, immigrant patriarch, born in England abt. 1648, embarking on May 30, 1656, at Gravesend on the ship Speedwell, and arrived in Boston June 27, 1656.
Children
:# James Freeman, b. June 15, 1860, Essex Co., NJ :# Samuel Prescott, b. October 4, 1863, Orange., NJ :# Harold Montfort, b. November 14, 1871, Dansville, NY :# Eleanor Howard, b. November 7, 1873, Staten Island, NY
:Samuel was named after Harriet Fay's grandfather, Samuel Prescott Phillips Fay.
Career
In 1865–66, having been given a health sabbatical by his church,{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_riRCAAAAIAAJ |page=129 |title=My Fifty Years in the Navy |author=Charles Edgar Clark |author-link=Charles Edgar Clark |year=1917 |publisher=Little, Brown and Company}} he traveled to San Francisco via the Straits of Magellan on the ironclad monitor with Commodore John Rodgers (a parishioner of his), with international goodwill stops along the way. Officially, he was designated Commodore's Secretary,{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1865/10/25/archives/for-the-pacific-coast-departure-of-the-vanderbilt-and-the-monadnock.html |title=For the Pacific Coast: Departure of the Vanderbilt and the Monadnock |date=October 25, 1865 |work=The New York Times |access-date=2008-01-06}} but was considered "acting chaplain", giving services on board and even conducting a shipboard wedding for a German American they encountered in Montevideo, an incident Bush recounted in dispatches he wrote for The Overland Monthly.{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5PUAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA17 |chapter=The Cruise of the "Monadnock" |author=James S. Bush |title=The Overland Monthly|year=1869
In 1867–1872, Bush was called to Grace Church (later Cathedral) in San Francisco, but troubled by family obligations, only stayed five years. His short stay along with that of photographic roll film inventor Hannibal Goodwin was to be satirized by Mark Twain in his weekly column in The Californian.
In 1872, Bush took a call from Church of the Ascension at West Brighton, Staten Island. In 1884, during a dispute over a church raffle (a gold watch was auctioned, which he considered gambling{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1883/12/30/archives/resigned-because-of-a-raffle.html |title=Resigned Because of a Raffle |date=December 30, 1883 |work=The New York Times |quote=The Rev. James S. Bush has resigned as Pastor of the Church of the Ascension, at West Brighton. A short time ago a fair was held in the church, when a gold watch was put up for chances and won by Erastus Brooks. The Rev. Mr. Bush was opposed to the raffle, which he considered gambling. There was considerable feeling in the church on account of the Pastor's wishes not being respected. |access-date=2008-01-06}}), he stepped down. |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9E02E0D61538E033A2575BC2A9679C94659FD7CF |title=A Pastor Chides His Flock; The Rev. Mr. Bush's Farewell Sermon at West Brighton |date=January 28, 1884 |quote=Peace now prevails in the Church of the Ascension at West Brighton, Staten Island, and raffles and such things may hold sway without let or hindrance. The Rector, the Rev. James S. Bush, who opposed the employing of games of chance to raise money for the church, has severed ... |work=The New York Times |access-date=2008-01-06}}
In 1883, Bush published a collection of sermons called More Words About the Bible, a response to his colleague Heber Newton's book Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible. In 1885, his book Evidence of Faith was reviewed by The Literary World as "clear, simple, and unpretending", and summarized as an argument against supernatural explanations for God.{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ykoDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA59 |chapter=The Evidence of Faith |year=1885 |title=The Literary World}} According to the same journal, both works fit into the broad church movement.{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aSs-AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA487 |chapter=News and Notes |year=1889 |title=The Literary World}} The Boston Advertiser called the latter work "the best statement of untrammeled spiritual thought" among recent books.{{cite book |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/kingschapelserm01peabgoog |page=6 |chapter=Books of Religion (advertising) |title=King's Chapel Sermons |year=1891 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin}} As quoted by publisher.
Bush retired to Concord, Massachusetts, and in 1888 left the Episcopal Church altogether and became a Unitarian. The stress of this separation caused him health problems for the remainder of his life. He moved to Ithaca, New York where he died suddenly while raking leaves in 1889.
Published works
Sermons
- {{cite book |title=The Atonement. A sermon, preached before the convention of the Diocese of New Jersey, on Wednesday, the 27th day of May, A.D. 1863 |year=1863 |oclc=31430725}}
- {{cite book |title=Death of president Lincoln. A sermon, preached in Grace Church, Orange, N.J., Easter, April 16, 1865 |url=https://archive.org/details/deathofpresident00bush |year=1865 |oclc=21467720}}
- {{cite book |title=Building on Christ: a sermon preached at the opening of St. Paul's Church, San Rafael, October 10th, 1869 |year=1869 |oclc=1022229}}
Books
- {{cite book |title=The priesthood and absolution |year=1878 |publisher=? |location=New York |oclc=949190}}
- {{cite book |title=More words about the Bible |url=https://archive.org/details/morewordsaboutbi00bush |year=1883 |publisher=J. W. Lovell |location=New York City |oclc=40115349}}
- {{cite book |title=Evidence of faith |url=https://archive.org/details/ldpd_7931328_000 |year=1885 |publisher=J. R. Osgood |location=Boston |oclc=5816854}}
References
References
- (2004). "A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush". W Publishing Group.
- (2014). "41: A Portrait of My Father". Ebury Publishing.
- "Yale Daily News - Cross Campus - Prescott S. Bush Jr. '44 dies at 87".
- Phelps Association membership directory, 2006
- "The Bush Family".
- (1903). "Vital Records of Southborough, Massachusetts, To the End of the Year 1849". Franklin P. Rice.
- [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/crypt/cry_20010221.shtml Years of Grace, Part I: Chapel to "Cathedral" - gracecathedral.org - Retrieved January 8, 2007] {{webarchive. link. (October 6, 2002)
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