My Genealogy Hound

GEORGE RUSH farmer, post-office Avilla, is a native of Darke county Ohio, born May 22, 1812, in a frontier fort, one of the Miami defenses. His father, James Rush, was a volunteer in the American army during the war with Great Britain. After the close of hostilities the fort was used by the family as a farm-house, where our subject spent his youth and early manhood assisting his father in clearing and making a farm. He emigrated with his parents to Cass county, Ind., in 1832, where he married Miss Mary A. Kelley, also a native of Ohio, Feb. 23, 1840. He was engaged for three years on a government survey; afterwards cleared and improved a farm of 160 acres, and run a saw-mill four years. He was again taken with the pioneer fever in 1854, coming to southwest Missouri and locating in McDonald township, where he commenced improving a farm and was happy and prosperous when interrupted by the breaking out of the civil war and obliged to leave his farm and growing crops on account of border ruffians, going to Brown county, Kan., in 1862, where he remained four years. Returning to his home in Jasper county, much reduced in circumstances, his first experience was the payment of a $500 security debt which was at that time very embarrassing. His farm now consists of eighty acres of improved land and forty acres of timber. Mr. Rush has been a good and useful citizen; has been a frontiersman nearly all his life and has reared and educated a family of seven children: M. P., now of Brown county Kansas; James M., Sarah E., deceased April 6, 1867, aged 18; William H., died July 14, 1878, aged 26; Mary A. E., wife of Jacob Sherrel, of Lawrence county, Mo.; and Elmer E. E. Mr. Rush has held the office of civil magistrate, both in this state and in Kansas. He was, in his younger days, an old time Whig but a staunch Republican since the organization of that party, in which he has ever taken an active interest, and though well known to the enemy during the war as an active Union man, for his integrity and generosity in former years his buildings were not disturbed during his absence. He has always taken an active interest in establishing schools and churches, himself and wife being members of the Baptist Church for forty years; assisted in organizing the first school in the district; and was prominent in the building of the Baptist Church of Avilla.