Arthur A. Denny

File:Mary A Boren.jpg.]]

Denny was born near Salem, Indiana; by the time he was attending school his family had settled in Knox County, Illinois. His father, John Denny (1793–1875), fought in the western battles of the War of 1812 and later served in the Illinois state legislature, elected as a Whig. (He eventually traveled west with the Denny Party, but stayed on in Oregon's Willamette River Valley when Arthur and several others moved north to Puget Sound.)Dorothea Nordstrand, [http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5647 Denny Party on the Oregon Trail], HistoryLink, February 15, 2004. Accessed online 10 March 2008. Denny did not have an easy childhood. He cared for his invalid mother while attending half-days in a log schoolhouse. He learned carpentry, taught school, studied surveying, and became a civil engineer and Knox County surveyor starting in 1843. In 1843, he married Mary Ann Boren; together they had six children: Louisa Catherine Frye, Margaret Leona Denny, Rolland Herschell Denny, Orion Orvil Denny, Arthur Wilson Denny, and Charles Latimer Denny.

In 1851, he led the Denny Party west. Leaving Illinois in April, they arrived in Portland, Oregon on August 23. In November, he booked passage on the schooner Exact and the party sailed on to Puget Sound, arriving at Alki Point on Elliott Bay on November 13, 1851. It soon became clear that Alki was not the best spot for a settlement. The Denny Party relocated to the east shore of Elliott Bay, near what is now Pioneer Square, the original heart of what became the city of Seattle.{{cite book |last1=Speidel |first1=William |title=Sons of the Profits |date=1967 |publisher=Nettle Creek Publishing Company |location=Seattle |pages=2–26}}

File:Univ of Wash Denny Hall 01.jpg

On February 15, 1852, Denny and others filed their claims. Denny soon established himself selling cargo on commission for ship captains.{{cite web|url=http://digitum.washingtonhistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/faids&CISOPTR=0&CISOBOX=1&REC=4|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130416034830/http://digitum.washingtonhistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/faids&CISOPTR=0&CISOBOX=1&REC=4|url-status=dead|archive-date=April 16, 2013|title=Arthur Armstrong Denny|last=Washington State Historical Society|access-date=2012-02-16}}

On November 25, 1852, Denny was a delegate at the Monticello Convention that produced a petition to US Congress to split the Oregon Territory, creating the Washington Territory, which would later become the state of Washington.{{cite book

| title = The History of the Pacific Northwest Oregon and Washington 1889: Volume I

| publisher= North Pacific History Company

| year = 1889

| location = Portland

| url = https://archive.org/details/historyofpacific01nort/page/n527

}}

In 1854 when he began a general merchandise partnership with Dexter Horton and David Phillips. In 1855, he volunteered to serve in the Indian War then taking place in Washington Territory. He served in several political offices. He was a county commissioner first for Thurston County (in what was then still part of the Oregon Territory), and then, after Washington became a separate territory, for King County, where Seattle is located.

He also served as Seattle's first postmaster and in the territorial House of Representatives for nine consecutive terms, including serving a term as speaker. From 1861 to 1865 he was registrar of the United States General Land Office. He served as territorial delegate to the thirty-ninth United States Congress.

Denny soon turned from politics to business. He returned to being a partner with Horton and Phillips, this time by taking a half interest in Dexter Horton and Co., the bank founded by Horton and Phillips in 1870, which would eventually become Seattle-First National Bank.Bill Virgin, [http://www.seattlepi.com/business/seaf24.shtml Come Monday, Seafirst name is history]{{dead link|date=June 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 24, 1999. Accessed online 8 March 2008. (Seattle-First National Bank was later named Seafirst Bank and after being purchased was later rebranded as part of Bank of America.) He was president of the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad Company and an investor in the Great Western Iron and Steel Company. Later in life, he was active in the Society of Washington Pioneers and wrote a memoir, Pioneer Days in Puget Sound.

Among his other achievements, he was involved in founding the University of Washington and donated much of the land for its original site.Debera Carlton Harrell, [http://www.seattlepi.com/local/145102_cdenny23.html Getting to know the real Denny], Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 23, 2003. Accessed online 8 March 2008. On the current U.W. campus, Denny Hall, the former administration building (built 1895) is named in his honor.[http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/uwcampus&CISOPTR=1506&CISOBOX=1&REC=2 Administration Building (now Denny Hall) exterior showing northeast side, University of Washington, ca. 1897] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611164129/http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=%2Fuwcampus&CISOPTR=1506&CISOBOX=1&REC=2 |date=2011-06-11 }} (photo and caption), University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections. Accessed online 10 March 2008.

In 1962, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.{{cite web |title=Hall of Great Westerners |url=https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/hall-of-great-westerners/ |website=National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum |access-date=November 21, 2019}}

Denny was an ascetic,Roger Sale, Seattle, Past to Present, University of Washington Press, 1978, {{ISBN|0-295-95615-1}}, p. 25. a devout Christian (conservative in his religion to the point of opposing a divorce law), and a lifelong teetotaler. Indeed, he was teetotal to the point where he had the customers of his store buy their liquor direct from visiting ship captains so that he would not be involved in the transactions. He was a political conservative, and a cautious and conservative businessman and investor. Denny, in his memoir, described his decision to head north from Portland to Puget Sound as a "desperate venture". Lorraine McConaghy, historian at Seattle's Museum of History and Industry, agrees, but characterizes it further as "the only one he ever undertook."

Denny supported the right of women to vote, going so far as to introduce legislation in 1854 to allow white women of 18 years and older the right to vote.{{cite web|url=http://digitum.washingtonhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/suffrage&CISOPTR=15&REC=3|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130416031826/http://digitum.washingtonhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/suffrage&CISOPTR=15&REC=3|url-status=dead|archive-date=April 16, 2013|title=1854 Womans Suffrage Amendment Introduced by Arthur Denny|access-date=2012-02-16}} The resolution was voted down.

This dour man is nonetheless remembered for at least one example of his wit. In his memoir, recounting his failure in 1853 to reach agreement with David Swinson "Doc" Maynard over what was intended to be a joint plat of the town of Seattle, he wrote, "it was found that the doctor, who occasionally stimulated a little, had that day taken enough to cause him to feel that he was not only monarch of all he surveyed, but what Boren and I had surveyed as well."Arthur Denny, [https://web.archive.org/web/20040530142401/http://geocities.com/elechtle/texts/Denny-Pioneer_Days.txt Pioneer Days in Puget Sound] (1888). Accessed online 8 March 2008.

It was later shown in a review done by a professional engineering firm on behalf of the city that it was in fact Denny that was wrong about the direction the streets should run and had actually violated the law in his plat of the city.{{Citation needed|date=February 2012}}

• Pioneer Days on Puget Sound (1888). ([https://web.archive.org/web/20040530142401/http://geocities.com/elechtle/texts/Denny-Pioneer_Days.txt Text online])
• Pioneer Days on Puget sound, published by The Alice Harriman Company, Seattle, 1908 ([https://archive.org/stream/pioneerdaysonpug00denn#page/n0/mode/2up Online text showing original pages])

{{reflist|2}}

• [http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=921 Biography of Arthur A. Denny]
• {{Citation | last =Jones | first =Nard | author-link =Nard Jones | year = 1972 | title =Seattle | place =Garden City, New York | publisher =Doubleday | isbn =0-385-01875-4}}
• [http://digitum.washingtonhistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/faids&CISOPTR=0&CISOBOX=1&REC=2 The finding guide at the Washington State Historical Society for Arthur A. Denny]
• [http://collections.washingtonhistory.org/details.aspx?id=109394 Photo of Denny, 1865] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20130416072604/http://collections.washingtonhistory.org/details.aspx?id=109394 |date=2013-04-16 }}
• [http://collections.washingtonhistory.org/details.aspx?id=108112 Photo of Denny, 1840] {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20130416034605/http://collections.washingtonhistory.org/details.aspx?id=108112 |date=2013-04-16 }}
• [http://content.lib.washington.edu/u?/ll,1109 Photo of sisters Louisa Boren and Mary Boren, wives of Arthur A. Denny and his brother David Denny.]

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{{US House succession box

|type= Delegate

|state= Washington Territory

|before=George E. Cole

|after=Alvan Flanders

|years= 1865-1867

}}

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Category:1822 births

Category:1899 deaths

Category:People from Knox County, Illinois

Category:Seattle City Council members

Category:King County Councillors

Category:People from Washington Territory

Category:Members of the Washington Territorial Legislature

Category:American city founders

Category:American bankers

Category:Delegates to the United States House of Representatives from Washington Territory

Category:Washington (state) Republicans

Category:People from Washington County, Indiana

Category:Washington (state) pioneers

Category:19th-century American businesspeople

Category:Burials at Lake View Cemetery (Seattle)

Category:19th-century members of the United States House of Representatives