Thomas Chauncey Bush, Grant Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to USGENWEB by Mike Miller


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Thomas Chauncey Bush, whose home is the ideal plantation on the Red River in Grant Parish
near Colfax, represents the third generation of the Bush family in Louisiana.  As a family they
have been identified with planting, merchandising and many kindred interests representative of
wealth and influence.

Thomas Chauncey Bush was born on the "Mouth of Darro plantation" in Grant Parish, October
20, 1869, son of William and Alice Maria (Zillian) Bush.  His mother was of Spanish and French
ancestry.  William Bush was a son of Dr. William E. and Mary (Hickman) Bush.  Doctor Bush
came south from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, during his early thirties, seeking a warm climate.  He
located on Rapides Bayou, in what is now Grant Parish.  He was a medical college graduate, and
practiced medicine in addition to managing his large property interests.  He was a slave owner,
but was opposed to the institution and the disruption of the Union.  In later years he retired from
medical practice and lived in New Orleans and in middle Tennessee.  He was ninety-one when
he died and his wife, forty-five.  His home before retiring from planting and professional work
was the Belleview plantation in Rapides Parish.

William Bush, the father of T. C. Bush, served as a Confederate soldier.  After the death of his
father he took over the management of the extensive property and lived on the Mouth of Darro
plantation, but had many other properties including Stores at Darro and Fairmount.  He was a
man of cultured mind, having finished his education in the Louisiana State Seminary, on the site
which was subsequently occupied by Camp Beauregard near Alexandria.  He equipped himself
for a commercial career, and was an expert accountant.  He was a democrat, and married into a
Catholic family and in a few years became a convert to that faith.  He was sixty years of age
when he died in 1892, and his wife passed away in 1909, aged seventy-two. Of their three
children Thomas C. Bush is the only surviving member and the only heir to the family estate. 
He is himself unmarried, his brother, Nicholas V., died at the age of thirty-live and the other
brother, William H., Jr., died when a boy.

Thomas Chauncey Bush lived on the Darro plantation until his father's death.  He then spent
seven years in the service of Mr. A. A. Dean and gives Mr. Dean principal credit for this training
in business that has enabled him to make a success of all his affairs.  In 1897 Mr. Bush and
Beverly H. Randolph opened a store at Kateland tinder the firm name of Bush & Randolph, and
the business in 1904 was incorporated as Bush & Randolph, Ltd.  The great overflow of 1908
and the boll weevil plague of the same period caused the business to be liquidated in 1909.  Prior
to that time Mr. Bush had become a stockholder in the J, V. Duncan & Company, Inc., at Colfax
and is vice-president of that company.  He is owner of a number of milling and banking interests,
being the first vice-president of the Bank of Colfax, director of the Iatt Lumber Company at
Colfax, is president of a motor company, and is a stockholder in the Louisiana Sawmill
Company at Glenmora, the Lenora Lumber Company and is president of the Colfax Realty
Company, being individually the owner of a large amount of real estate in East Baton Rouge
Parish and in Alexandria.  He has the management of seven plantations in Grant, Rapides and
other parishes.  He has devoted himself to business, and has found in his responsibilities an
instrument of usefulness to the world and a complete absorption of his tastes and inclinations.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 56, by Henry E. Chambers.  Published by The American
Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.