By Thomas J. Balcerski

Connecticut is the birthplace of only one president—George W. Bush on July 6, 1946, at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven. But the Nutmeg State was in many ways home to three generations of Bush family members from the 1920s through the 1970s. Before George W., there was his father, George H.W. Bush, who became 41st President of the United States, and before him there was his father’s father, Prescott Sheldon Bush, a moderator of the Greenwich town meeting and a U.S. Senator from 1952 to 1962.

George Bush, captain of the Yale baseball team, receives Babe Ruth’s manuscript of his autobiography which he was… – NARA – 186375 National Archives and Records Administration, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Prescott Sheldon Bush

Prescott and Dorothy Bush 1952, National Archives and Records Administration Electronic Records Archives Program-White House Photograph Office Permission-unrestricted

The son of Samuel Prescott Bush and Flora Sheldon, Prescott Sheldon Bush was born in Columbus, Ohio, on May 15, 1895. From public school in Columbus, Ohio, he went next to St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, before following his paternal grandfather (James Smith Bush, class of 1844) and maternal uncle (Robert E. Sheldon, Jr., class of 1904) to Yale University. Known variously as “Pres” and “Doc,” Bush embraced collegiate sports (earning varsity letters in golf and baseball), extracurricular activities (singing for the glee club, quartet, and the choir), and secret societies (Skull and Bones), graduating in 1917. A year earlier, reflecting the mood of preparedness sweeping the nation, Bush had joined the Connecticut National Guard. After being deployed to France at the tail end of World War I, he attended his Yale reunion in 1919, which launched his career in the hardware business.
Prescott’s commercial ventures took him across the United States. He went to work for the Simmons Hardware Company in St. Louis, Missouri, where he met his future wife, Dorothy Walker; the coupled married in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1921. Prescott Bush next joined the Stedman Products rubber company based in South Braintree, Massachusetts, and the family relocated to nearby Milton, where on June 12, 1924, their second son George Herbert Walker Bush was born. A year later, Prescott accepted a job with the United States Rubber Company headquartered in New York City and the family settled in a house at 15 Grove Lane in Greenwich.
In 1931, Prescott Bush entered the industry that would define his business career —investment banking— but he found public service to be an even greater calling. He was elected as first selectman of the Greenwich town meeting in 1933, a position he held for twenty years. From 1947 to 1950, he served as the Republican Party’s national finance chair, followed by an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1950. In a special election after the death of Senator Brien McMahon in 1952, he beat out Republican rival Clare Booth Luce and eventually Democrat Abraham Ribicoff for the seat. Following reelection to the Senate over Thomas Dodd in 1956, he retired from public life in 1963. He died of cancer in 1972 and was buried at Putnam Cemetery in Greenwich.

George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush

George and Barbara Bush with their first born child George W. Bush, while Bush was a student at Yale. NARA says unrestricted use and access, it is apart of the George Bush Library (College Station, TX)

George H.W. Bush, who went by “Pop” or “Poppy,” had a “very happy childhood,” though his upbringing was “strict—indeed, puritanical.” At the newly established Greenwich Country Day School, the children of the Bush family embraced the school’s signature mix of academics and athletics. George H.W. first met his future wife, Barbara Pierce of Rye, New York, at the Round Hill Country Club during a holiday dance in 1941. On his eighteenth birthday, Bush followed in his father’s footsteps and decided to enlist in the military, becoming the youngest torpedo bomber in the U.S. Navy during World War II, after graduation.
George H.W. returned to Connecticut to attend Yale University in 1945. He graduated in just two-and-a-half years, earning a Phi Beta Kappa key in economics. He and Barbara lived at 37 Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, a one-family house that had been converted into apartments that they shared with other veterans and their families. They welcomed their first child, George Walker Bush, into the world at Grace-New Haven Hospital (now Yale-New Haven Hospital) in 1946. In 1947, the family moved to Midland, Texas, to pursue the oil business, and did not reside in Connecticut again until George Walker Bush’s time at Yale from 1964 to 1968, during which they lived in various homes in the area. Few remnants of the Bush family’s time in Connecticut are visible today; a New York Times article from the year 2000 attempts to unpack George W.’s reticence to claim New Haven as his birthplace. The town of Greenwich, however, plans to erect a bronze statue to honor George H.W. Bush, approved by the Historic District Commission in July 2025 and expected to be completed by late 2026.

Thomas J. Balcerski is editor of Connecticut History Review and Director of the Center for Connecticut Studies and a professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University.