With the ratification of the Adams-Onís Treaty, Spain officially renounced a claim to the Oregon Country on February 22, 1821.

(The treaty was originally signed two years earlier to the day, on February 22, 1819, by United States Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Spanish minister Luis de Onís, but Spain took their sweet time to ratify it.)

The treaty was largely about establishing the border of New Spain and U.S. territory that was part of the Louisiana Purchase. The U.S. got Florida, Spain got Texas (for the time being), and Spain agreed to relinquish any claim to Oregon north of the 42nd parallel – i.e. the northern border of California.

Credit: Adams-Onís Treaty map by Wikipedia user Citynoise. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

On February 8, 1853 a bill was introduced in congress to make the portion of the Oregon Territory north of the Columbia River (and the 46th parallel east of the Columbia) the Washington Territory. At the time this area included all of present day Washington state, plus northern Idaho and a chunk of Montana.

Originally the area was to be called it the Columbia Territory, but Washington won out. The current capital, Olympia, was also the capital of the territory.

Map credit: Map by Matthew Trump, used under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license.

George Washington Bush was a married father of five sons who owned a successful Missouri farm. He was also African-American. In 1844, fed up with racial prejudice, he set out on the Oregon Trail in hopes of making a better life for his family.

Upon arrival, however, he found the awful Lash Law, passed by Oregon’s Provisional Government, which banned blacks from living in Oregon. Violators of this obnoxious law could be subjected to 20-39 lashes with a whip every six months until they left the territory.

So George Washington Bush settled north of the Columbia, ultimately staking out a 640 acre farm in frontier land near Tumwater, far from the population center of the Willamette Valley where the racist laws originated.

But then in 1846 the 49th parallel, where the U.S. – Canada border is now, was declared the northern boundary of the Oregon Territory. The racist laws of the Oregon Territory pursued George Washington Bush once again. For nearly a decade Bush’s neighbors and friends lent support and finally, on January 30, 1855 the US Congress passed a special act allowing Bush to retain his land and property.