SAMUEL COOMBS TALKS.
“S. F. Coombs, the well-known pioneer, had known Mr. Denny since 1859, about forty-five years. ‘It was to Mr. Denny,’ said Mr. Coombs, ‘that the Indians who lived here and knew him always went for advice and comfort and to have their disputes settled. Their high estimate of the man was shown in many ways, where the whites were under consideration. Mr. Denny was a man whom I always admired and greatly respected. He afforded me much information of the resident Indians here and around Salmon Bay, as he was intimately acquainted with them all.
“‘At one time Mr. Denny was reckoned as Seattle’s wealthiest citizen. When acting as deputy assessor for Andrew Chilberg, the city lying north of Mill Street, now Yesler Way, was my district to assess. Denny’s holdings, D. T. Denny’s plats, had the year previous been assessed by the acre. The law was explicit, and to have made up the assessment by the acre would have been illegal. Mr. Denny’s assessed value the year before was fifty thousand dollars. The best I could do was to make the assessment by the lot and block. For the year I assessed two hundred and fifty thousand. Recourse was had to the county commissioners, but the assessment remained about the same. Just before his purchase of the Seattle street car system he was the wealthiest man in King County, worth more than five hundred thousand dollars.
“‘Of Mr. Denny it may be said that if others had applied the Golden Rule as he did, he would have been living in his old home in great comfort in this city today.’”
LIFE OF DAVID DENNY.
“Fifty-two years and two months ago David Thomas Denny came to Seattle, to the spot where Seattle now stands enthroned upon her seven hills. Mr. Denny, the last but one of the little band of pioneers—some half dozen men first to make this spot their home—has been gathered to his fathers; ‘has wrapped the mantle of his shroud about him and laid down to pleasant dreams.’ Gone is a man and citizen who perhaps loved Seattle best of all those who ever made Seattle their home. This is attested by the fact that from the time that Mr. Denny first came to Elliott Bay it has been his constant home. Never but once or twice during that long period of time did he go far away, and then for but a very short time. Once he went as far away as New York—and that proved a sad trip—and once, in recent years, to California. Both trips were comparatively brief, and he who first conquered the primeval forest that crowned the hills around returned home full of intense longing to get back and full of love for the old home.
“Mr. Denny lived a rugged, honorable, upright life—the life of a patriarch. He bore patiently a long period of intense suffering manfully and without murmur, and when the end approached he calmly awaited the summons and died as if falling away into a quiet sleep. So he lived, so he died.
“Few indeed who can comprehend the extent of his devotion to Seattle. Living in Seattle for the last two years, yet for that period he never looked once upon the city which he helped to build. About that long ago he moved from his home which he had maintained for some years at Fremont, to the place where he died, Licton Springs, about a mile north of Green Lake. Said Mr. Denny as he went from the door of the old home he was giving up for the new: ‘This will be the last time I will ever look upon Seattle,’ and Mr. Denny’s words were true. He never was able to leave again the little sylvan home his family—his wife, sister and children—had raised for him in the woods. There, dearly loved, he was watched over and cared for by the children and by the wife who had shared with him for two-score-and-ten years the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs that characterized his life in a more marked degree than was the experience of any other of the pioneers who first reached this rugged bay.
“Mr. Denny was once, not so very long ago, a wealthy man—some say the wealthiest in the city—but he died poor, very poor; but he paid his debts to the full. Once the owner in fee simple of land upon which are now a thousand beautiful Seattle homes, he passed on to his account a stranger in a strange land, and without title to his own domicile. When the crisis and the crash came that wrecked his fortune he went stoutly to work, and if he ever repined it was not known outside of the family and small circle of chosen friends. That was about fourteen years ago, and up to two years ago Mr. Denny toiled in an humble way, perhaps never expecting, never hoping to regain his lost fortune. Those last years of labor were spent, for the most part, at the Denny Mine on Gold Creek, a mine, too, in which he had no direct interest or ownership, or in directing work upon the Snoqualmie Pass road. He came down from the hills to his sick bed and to his death.
“Mr. Denny’s life for half a century is the history of the town. Without the Dennys there might have been no Seattle. Of all the band that came here in the fall of 1851, they seemed to have taken deepest root and to have left the stamp of their name and individuality which is keen and patent to this day.”
SONS OF D. T. AND LOUISA DENNY
Victor W. S. D. Thomas John B.
CAME FROM ILLINOIS.
“The Dennys came from Illinois, from some place near Springfield, and crossing Iowa, rendezvoused at what was then Kanesville, now Council Bluffs. They came by way of Fort Hall and the South Pass, along the south side of the Snake River, where, at or near American Falls, they had their first and only brush with the Indians. There was only desultory firing and no one was injured. The party reached The Dalles August 11, 1851. The party separated there, Low, Boren and A. A. Denny going by river to Portland, arriving August 22. In September, Low and D. T. Denny drove a herd of cattle, those that drew them across the plains, to Chehalis River to get them to a good winter range. These men came on to the Sound and here they arrived before the end of that month. After looking around some, Low went away, having hired Mr. Denny, who was an unmarried man, to stay behind and build Low a cabin. This was done and on September 28th, 1851, the foundation of this first cabin was laid close to the beach at Alki Point.
“A. A. Denny, Low, Boren, Bell and C. C. Terry arrived at Alki Point, joining D. T. Denny. That made a happy little family, twenty-four persons, twelve men and women, twelve children and one cabin. In this they all resided until the men could erect a second log cabin. By this time the immediate vicinity of the point had been stripped of its building logs and the men had to go back and split shakes and carry them out of the woods on their backs. With these they erected two ‘shake’ or split cedar houses that, with the two log cabins, provided fair room for the twenty-four people.
“During that winter the men cut and loaded a small brig with piles for San Francisco. The piles were cut near the water and rolled and dragged by hand to where they would float to the vessel’s side. There were no oxen in the country at that time and the first team that came to Elliott Bay was driven along the beach at low tide from up near Tacoma.”
SURROUNDED BY INDIANS.