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The name Bushrod seems to have entered among the descendants of Nathan Spencer of Loudoun County, Virginia through friendship with Bushrod Washington rather than from any blood link that I have been able to identify. Nathan Spencer was a contemporary of George Washington, and, per family tradition, a friend of our first President (under the Constitution) from the period preceding the war.
Nathan Spencer's daughter Rachel was the mother of Gen. Bushrod Rust Johnson. In addition, Nathan Spencer's grandson Samuel Spencer (my 2nd great grandfather) named a son Bushrod, who fought in the Civil War on the Union side.
You might find a book about Gen. Bushrod R. Johnson of interest. It's called "Yankee Quaker Confederate General." The thesis is that Gen. Johnson was less than a great general because he was haunted by the contradictions in his background: that his service for the Confederacy was fundamentally at odds with the fiercely anti-slavery views of his ancestry, and beyond that, his career as a soldier was out of harmony with the pacifist tenets of his Quaker ancestors.
Even though Rachel (Spencer) Johnson was born and raised in Virginia, she and all of her siblings moved to Ohio, at least in part out of a dislike for slavery.
Further to the Washington connection, prior to Valley Forge Gen. Washington made his headquarters at Dawesfield, a stone house in Whitpain Township built by Abraham Dawes, Jr., maternal uncle to Nathan Spencer. At the time of the Revolution the home was owned by Nathan Spencer's first cousin Elizabeth and her husband James Morris.
This house remained in the family until about 1993. When we visited it in 1987 the study was still as basically it had been under General Washington's use, with his desk in place. In a picture frame on the wall were locks of his hair swept up after a haircut in that room. It seemed a time warp transporting us to the moment when the survival of the liberty we now take for granted was very much in doubt.
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