It is my opinion that Arthur Armstrong Denny led an exemplary life and that he ever desired to do justice to others. If he failed in doing so, it was the fault of those with whom he was associated rather than his own.
A leading trait in his character was integrity, another was the modesty that ever accompanies true greatness, noticeable also in his well known younger brother, D. T. Denny; neither has been boastful, arrogant or grasping for public honors.
A. A. Denny fought the long battle of the pioneer faithfully and well and sleeps in an honored grave.
MARY A. DENNY.
Mary Ann Boren (Denny) was born in Tennessee, November 25th, 1822, the first child of Richard Boren and Sarah Latimer Boren (afterward Denny). Her grandfather Latimer, a kind hearted, sympathetic man, sent a bottle of camphor to revive the pale young mother. This camphor bottle was kept in the family, the children resorting to it for the palliation of cuts and bruises throughout their adolescence, and it is now preserved by her own family as a cherished relic, having seen eighty years and more since its presentation.
After the death of her father, leaving her mother a young widow with three small children, they lived in Illinois as pioneers, where Mary shared the toils, dangers and vicissitudes of frontier life. Was not this the school for the greater pioneering of the farthest west?
November 23rd, 1843, she married Arthur A. Denny, a man who both recognized and acknowledged her worth.
When she crossed the plains in 1851 with the Denny company, Mrs. Denny was a young matron of twenty-nine years, with two little daughters. The journey, arduous to any, was peculiarly trying to her with the helpless ones to care for and make as comfortable as such tenting in the wilds might be.
At Fort Laramie her own feet were so uncomfortable in shoes that she put on a pair of moccasins which David T. Denny had bought of an Indian and worn for one day. Mrs. Denny wore them during the remainder of the journey to Portland.