Samuel Prescott Bush (October 4, 1863 Brick Church, New Jersey - February 8, 1948 Columbus, Ohio) was the father of Senator Prescott Bush, grandfather of George H. W. Bush, and great-grandfather of George W. Bush.
Bush was president (c 1906-1927) of Buckeye Steel Castings of Columbus, Ohio, which (among other things) made railway parts for the Harrimans. The two families were closely associated at least until the end of World War II.
He was the first president of National Manufactures Association, and cofounder of Scioto Country Club and Columbus Academy. He was an avid sports buff.
In the spring of 1918, Bush became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms, and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board of Bernard Baruch and Clarence Dillon, with national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies.
Samuel Bush was a close advisor to President Herbert Hoover.
During the height of American isolationism, a Senate Munitions Inquiry, often called the Nye Committee after its chairman, Senator Gerald Nye, critically examined the military-industrial complex of government agencies, corporations, labor unions, and banking. The Nye Committee has been portrayed as a naive isolationist search for evil arms dealers ("Merchants of Death") who caused wars, underplaying the social, intellectual, political, and cultural currents of the 1930s which have more recently been re-examined (see reference Coulter). The Committee was formed in August 1933. It examined World War I military-industrial finances in January and February 1936. In spite of this second historical connection, most of the records and correspondence of Samuel P. Bush's arms-related work with the government were destroyed at the National Archives, in order 'to save space'.