Cracking walnuts on the generous hearth helped to beguile the long winter evenings. A master might have beheld a worthy subject in the merry children and their mother thus occupied.
If other light were needed than the ruddy gleams the fire gave, it was furnished by a lard lamp hung by a chain and staple in the wall, or one of a pallid company of dipped candles.
Sometimes there were unwelcome visitors bent on helping themselves to the best the farm afforded; one day a wolf chased a chicken up into the chimney corner of the Boren cabin, to the consternation of the small children. Wolves also attacked the sheep alongside the cabin at the very moment when one of the family was trying to catch some lambs; such savage boldness brought hearty and justifiable screams from the young shepherdess thus engaged.
The products of the garden attached to this cabin are remembered as wonderful in richness and variety; the melons, squashes, pumpkins, etc., the fragrant garden herbs, the dill and caraway seeds for the famous seedcakes carried in grandmothers’ pockets or “reticules.” In addition to these, the wild fruits and game; haws, persimmons, grapes, plums, deer and wild turkey; the medicinal herbs, bone-set and blood-root; the nut trees heavily laden in autumn, all ministered to the comfort and health of the pioneers.
The mistress was known for her generous hospitality then, and throughout her life. In visiting and treating the sick she distanced educated practitioners in success. Never a violent partisan, she was yet a steadfast friend. One daughter has said that she never knew any one who came so near loving her neighbor as herself. Just, reasonable, kind, ever ready with sympathetic and wholesome advice, it was applicably said of her, “She openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness.”
As the years went by the children were sent to school, the youngest becoming a teacher.
Toilsome years they were, but doubtless full of rich reward.
Afterward, while yet in the prime of life, she married John Denny, a Kentuckian and pioneer of Indiana, Illinois and finally of Oregon and Washington.
With this new alliance new fields of effort and usefulness opened before her. The unusual occurrence of a widowed mother and her two daughters marrying a widower and his two sons made this new tie exceeding strong. With them, as before stated, she crossed the plains and “pioneered it” in Oregon among the Waldo Hills, from whence she moved to Seattle on Puget Sound with her husband and little daughter, Loretta Denny, in 1859.
The shadow of pioneer days was scarcely receding, the place was a little straggling village and much remained of beginnings. As before in all other places, her busy hands found much to do; many a pair of warm stockings and mittens from her swift needles found their way into the possession of the numerous grand and great-grandchildren. In peaceful latter days she sat in a cozy corner with knitting basket at hand, her Bible in easy reach.