Untitled Document
The Bush side of the presidents’ family
receives nearly all of the attention from historians; the Walker side, by
comparison, is almost anonymous to history. But the mostly forgotten Walkers of central Illinois
merit consideration if the heritage of the two-presidents Bush is to be
more comprehensively assessed. George E. and Harriet Walker, direct-line ancestors
of two presidents, had a large family — eight sons and two daughters.
Seven sons were born in Maryland plantation country,
before the down-on-their-luck Walkers lost their land at Cecil County,
pioneered to central Illinois, and settled on a 64-acre
farmstead at Blooming Grove in McLean County, a few miles southeast of
Bloomington. Three sons died in Maryland, early in childhood.
The surviving sons traveled west with their parents
in the fall of 1838: • John Mercer
Walker, the firstborn, served in the Mexican
War at Santa Fe. Soon after, he caught “gold fever” and went
overland to California in 1849. His first cousin, Circuit Judge David Davis
of Bloomington, helped stake his adventure. John stayed in the Sacramento Valley and farmed 160
acres in Yolo County for more than two decades before returning to Illinois
to manage a Davis farm near Maroa. He retired sometime around 1883 and
lived with the Davis family in their Clover Lawn mansion at Bloomington
until he died in 1888, at age 65.
• Thomas S. Walker died in 1845, at age 19. Nothing else is known about
him, except that he is buried in the pioneer Woodlawn (Rhodes) Cemetery in
rural Bloomington Township. • George W. Walker married Mary Lilly and farmed for the rest of his
life near other Lilly family members in Tazewell County’s Mackinaw
Township. They had five children and also reared a son of a Walker brother
who died tragically in an 1876 farm accident. Mary’s parents built and operated the Lilly
Inn, where lawyers such as Abraham Lincoln sometimes stopped in when Davis
was holding court in Tazewell County. Letters in the David Davis Papers — archived at
various locations, including Springfield — affirm that George lived
and worked for extended periods at the David and Sarah Davis home in
Bloomington while growing up. Family members relate that George often took care of
the Davis horses. He was being paid about $12 a month by Davis in 1852.
George occasionally drove the judge’s carriage when Davis was riding
his judicial circuit. According to family lore, Lincoln is believed to have
ridden along with them at least once — and maybe more often. George died in 1896, at age 63. • Edward S.
“Ned” Walker also was
regularly found at the Davis home in Bloomington during the 1840s and
1850s, the same years in which Lincoln would drop by to visit the judge. Ned returned from Civil War service in the spring of
1865, several months after the death of his father, and took charge of the
family farm at Blooming Grove. He married Sarah Bay of Bloomington. His
mother Harriet lived with them until her death, in 1869. Ned died in 1876, at age 40, when he accidentally
fell to his death in a farm well. Sarah and her three young children soon
left the farm that had been in the Walker family for about four decades. Three children were added to the family after the
move to McLean County: • David Davis
Walker was born in 1840. Letters in the David Davis Papers show that with the
assistance — and at the insistence — of the judge, D.D. Walker
attended the Beloit College preparatory school in Wisconsin for two years.
Young Walker then journeyed to St. Louis in 1857,
soon after his schooling, for employment as a clerk in the wholesale
dry-goods firm of Crow, McCreery & Co. Wayman Crow founded the business
in 1835. He was a longtime friend of Davis and partnered with the judge in
various land transactions across the Midwest. D.D. Walker quickly learned the dry-goods business.
He had his own company by the 1880s and was living exceptionally well
— though sometimes in poor health — in St. Louis. Around the
turn of the century, his six children were marrying into some of the most
influential St. Louis families, such as Lambert, Filley, Papin and Wear. He
and wife Martha had a summer home at Kennebunkport, Maine, and a winter
home at Santa Barbara, Calif. Later, in 1921, granddaughter Dorothy Walker —
a daughter of George Herbert and Lucretia (Wear) Walker — married
Prescott Sheldon Bush. Bush was elected to the U.S. Senate from Connecticut
in 1952 and served two terms. Former President George Herbert Walker Bush
is one of his sons. President George Walker Bush and former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush are two of his grandsons. D.D. Walker died at Kennebunkport in 1918, at age 78.
• Rosetta Walker had 10 children with husband Thomas LeRoy Ijams. They
farmed in the LeRoy area in DeWitt County. She died in 1919, at age 77.
Like her siblings, Rose sometimes lived away from the family farm during
her younger years, helping out at the always-busy Davis family home at
Bloomington. • Sarah Davis
Walker began occasionally living with the
Davis family as early as 1853, when she was about 8 years old. Sarah married Samuel Raley in the mid-1860s. They
farmed and had four children. The Raleys first lived in Illinois, near
LeRoy, then in Kansas, Missouri, and Texas. Sarah died in 1915, probably in
Wharton County, Texas, at age 70. Even after his death, on June 26, 1886, Judge David
Davis continued to assist the less successful of his Walker cousins —
just as he had regularly helped them and their parents across earlier
decades of the 19th century. Decatur’s Daily
Review newspaper reported on Aug. 4, 1886,
that the will of the late circuit judge, Supreme Court justice and U.S.
senator had been “offered for
probate” and that it included “comfortable
support for his poor relations. . . . ” Among the “poor
relations” were all but two — D.D. and George W. — of his
Walker cousins. He provided lifetime annual legacies for some of them
and one-time bequests for others. Also, he gave “my horse
‘Whoodlebug’ and my Washington buggy” to John Mercer
Walker. Shortly before the judge died, D.D. Walker visited
Clover Lawn to pay respects to a first cousin who had, about three decades
earlier, helped put Lincoln in the White House even as he was also giving
the young Walker a life-changing jump-start to future personal and family
success.
Neither man knew that someday there would be two U.S.
presidents in the family.
Contact Roger Hughes at rdhughes@insightbb.com.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2007.
