OLYMPIA Growing up in Tumwater, a half century ago, Mark and Kathleen Clark knew nothing of George Bush. They weren’t taught about him in public school. They wouldn’t learn about Bush a Black pioneer who fled violent discrimination in Missouri and Oregon before establishing the first non-Indigenous American settlement in what would become Washington state until well into adulthood.
Clark County History: Columbia Lancaster By Martin Middlewood, for The Columbian
Published: May 2, 2021, 6:00am
Share: This painting of Columbia Lancaster hangs in the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. His friends called him Judge because he sat on the Oregon Territorial Provisional Government Court before the Washington Territory was formed in 1853. Later he became the first district judge in the Washington Territory and its first delegate to Congress. (Contributed by Washington State History Museum)
Columbia Lancaster’s mother changed the boy’s name from Thomas after Meriwether Lewis visited their home in New Milford, Conn., and told the family about the great river of the West.