“Ever afterwards, he was known as Dr. Bush”

David Bushnell’s pioneering submarine didn’t do much damage to the Royal Navy in 1776, but the next year he came back with another invention.

As Christian McBurney relates in this article, in August 1777 Bushnell oversaw an attack on H.M.S. Cerberus with explosive mines. They didn’t hit the warship, but they did destroy a schooner and kill three British sailors.

In August 1779 Bushnell became an officer in a new Continental corps of “Sappers and Miners.” Two years later, Capt. Bushnell led his specialized unit in the siege of Yorktown.

In 1787 Bushnell moved from Connecticut to France. There’s not much evidence of what he did there. Some people speculate that he crossed paths with Robert Fulton, who would design his own submarine as well as a steamboat. However, it looks to me like Fulton didn’t go to France until 1797, and by then Bushnell was back in the U.S. of A.

Not in Connecticut, however. Instead, Bushnell settled in Georgia “in 1795 or 96,” according to the Rev. George White’s Historical Collections of Georgia (1854). At first he was “a teacher in the County of Columbia.”

He was eminently distinguished for his classical and scientific learning. His chief enjoyments were found in the instruction of his classes, and an occasional visit to a few men of congenial spirit. . . .

His old fellow soldier, the Hon. Abraham Baldwin, received him into his family, under whose auspices he had no difficulty in placing himself at the head of one of the most respectable schools in Georgia. In this vocation he spent several years, and under his guidance and tuition many of our most useful citizens received valuable instructions in learning and morals.

Bushnell and Baldwin (1754–1807, shown above) had met at Yale in the early 1770s. Baldwin was barely a “fellow soldier,” though; he had been a chaplain for Connecticut troops but spent most of the war preparing for the Congregationalist pulpit. Then in 1783 he suddenly changed direction, became a lawyer, and moved to Georgia.

Within a few years Baldwin was representing the state in the Confederation Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the first federal House of Representatives. He also served as president of the nascent University of Georgia while it was organized.

As for the “family” that Baldwin welcomed Bushnell into, both men were lifelong bachelors. It looks like Bushnell shared Baldwin’s house for several years before the younger man died suddenly in 1807 while serving in the U.S. Senate.

The Historical Collections of Georgia profile of Bushnell continued:

Late in life, he settled in Warrenton as a practitioner of physic. Then, and ever afterwards, he was known as Dr. Bush. For reasons which have never been disclosed, he had some time before he settled in Georgia, dropped the last syllable of his name; and until the publication of his last will and testament, no person in this country, except his old friend Baldwin, was apprised of the fact that his family name was Bushnell.

The name of “David Bush, Phicion [physician]” does appear on Georgia tax records for 1805, owning “Stock in trade & House adjoining Warrenton.” Three years later, he bought more real estate. In 1810 David Bush was one of the commissioners to incorporate the town of Warrenton, named for Dr. Joseph Warren.

At least one other local did know Dr. Bush’s real name, however. In 1814 George Hargraves, a notary in Warren County, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson enclosing a “description and drawing of a Torpedo” that might be useful to the U.S. in the current war. He said the inventor was “a man of science” mentioned in David Ramsay’s history of the Revolution, hinting: “you will readily conjecture who the Inventor is.” Bushnell must therefore have entrusted Hargraves with his secret, just as he trusted the man to be an executor of his will.

Dr. Bush probably died in early 1826. Hargraves started advertising for his debtors to come pay what they owed the estate on 15 March of that year.

On 9 August an item appeared in the Middlesex Gazette of Middletown, Connecticut, reminding readers about Bushnell and his “destructive machine.” It reported:

About 30 years since, Mr. Bushnell left his native town, and from that period no information was received respecting him, until very recently, when a gentleman arrived in Saybrook from Georgia, with the intelligence that Mr. Bushnell had lately died in that State, leaving about 9,000 dollars in cash; accumulated principally by the practice of Medicine; which Mr. B. had given to him, he being a particular friend, provided that if he should, upon inquiry, discover that Mr. B’s connexions in Saybrook, were from their character, worthy of the property, such connexions were to receive the whole amount.

The gentleman with whom it was entrusted, ascertained, on reaching Saybrook, that Mr. Bushnell’s nearest relatives were four nephews, and those all men of worth and integrity, and faithfully divided the property among them.

Those were the sons of David Bushnell’s brother Ezra. In addition to the money, this article said, he bequeathed them an “unfinished a piece of mechanism, upon which he had bestowed much pains”—but what it was, the newspaper didn’t, or couldn’t, say.

The Middlesex Gazette stated: “Mr. Bushnell…bore a very high reputation as a mechanical genius, and was esteemed an exemplary member of society, although possessing many eccentricities of character.” Again, the paper didn’t say what those eccentricities were.