Arthur Armstrong Denny

Arthur Armstrong Denny (June 20, 1822 – January 9, 1899) was an American politician, businessman, and pioneer who is regarded as one of the founders of Seattle, Washington. A leader of the group of settlers known as the Denny Party, he played a central role in the early development of the city and later became its wealthiest citizen. Over the course of his public life he served nine consecutive terms in the Washington territorial legislature and held numerous local and federal offices, including a term as territorial delegate to the United States Congress. Seattle’s former Denny Hill was named in his honor; it was later flattened in a series of regrading projects, and its former site is now known as the Denny Regrade. The city’s Denny Way, however, is named not after Arthur Denny, but after his younger brother David Denny.

Denny was born near Salem, Washington County, Indiana, on June 20, 1822. During his childhood his family moved west and settled in Knox County, Illinois, where he attended school. His father, John Denny (1793–1875), had fought in the western campaigns of the War of 1812 and subsequently served in the Illinois state legislature as a Whig, providing Arthur with an early example of public service and political engagement. Arthur’s youth was marked by hardship: he cared for his invalid mother while attending school only half-days in a log schoolhouse. Despite these circumstances, he pursued practical skills and technical training, learning carpentry, teaching school, and studying surveying. By 1843 he had become a civil engineer and was appointed surveyor of Knox County, Illinois.

In 1843 Denny married Mary Ann Boren, whose family would later migrate west with the Dennys and become closely associated with the founding of Seattle. Arthur and Mary Ann had six children: Louisa Catherine Frye, Margaret Leona Denny, Rolland Herschell Denny, Orion Orvil Denny, Arthur Wilson Denny, and Charles Latimer Denny. During the 1840s Denny established himself as a surveyor and local public figure in Illinois, while his father continued his political career. When the family decided to seek new opportunities in the Pacific Northwest, John Denny joined the migration, although he would ultimately remain in Oregon’s Willamette Valley when Arthur and others pushed farther north.

In April 1851 Denny led the Denny Party overland from Illinois toward the Pacific Coast. The party arrived in Portland, Oregon, on August 23, 1851. Seeking a suitable site for a new settlement, Denny arranged passage on the schooner Exact, and in November 1851 the group sailed north to Puget Sound. They landed at Alki Point on Elliott Bay on November 13, 1851, establishing a small settlement there. It soon became apparent that Alki Point was not ideal for long-term development, and under Denny’s leadership the party relocated to the eastern shore of Elliott Bay, near what is now Pioneer Square, the original heart of the future city of Seattle. On February 15, 1852, Denny and his associates filed their land claims in the area, laying the legal groundwork for the townsite. Denny initially supported himself and the settlement by selling cargo on commission for visiting ship captains, carefully avoiding the liquor trade in keeping with his personal convictions.

Denny quickly emerged as a leading figure in the political organization of the region. On November 25, 1852, he served as a delegate to the Monticello Convention, a gathering that drafted a petition to the United States Congress to divide the Oregon Territory and create a separate Washington Territory. Congress subsequently acted on this request, and Washington Territory was established in 1853, later becoming the state of Washington. Denny served first as a county commissioner for Thurston County when the area was still part of Oregon Territory, and then, after the creation of Washington Territory, as a county commissioner for King County, where Seattle is located. He also volunteered for military service during the Indian War of 1855 in Washington Territory, reflecting his involvement in the defense and consolidation of the new settlements.

As Seattle grew, Denny combined public service with commercial enterprise. In 1854 he entered a general merchandise partnership with Dexter Horton and David Phillips, helping to build the commercial infrastructure of the young community. He served as Seattle’s first postmaster, an important position in an isolated frontier town, and was elected to the territorial House of Representatives for nine consecutive terms, including a term as speaker of the house. From 1861 to 1865 he was registrar of the United States General Land Office, a federal position that placed him at the center of land administration during a critical period of settlement and development. As a member of the Republican Party representing Washington, Arthur Armstrong Denny contributed to the legislative process during 1 term in office as territorial delegate to the Thirty-ninth United States Congress, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents in Washington Territory during the Reconstruction era.

Denny’s political career extended beyond legislative service. He ran for mayor of Seattle in 1886 but was defeated by William H. Shoudy, the candidate of an anti-Chinese People’s Party that had formed in the wake of the Seattle riot of 1886; Denny lost by a margin of 41 votes out of approximately 2,400 cast. Over time he increasingly turned from politics to business. He renewed his association with Dexter Horton and David Phillips by taking a half interest in Dexter Horton and Co., the bank founded by Horton and Phillips in 1870, which would eventually evolve into Seattle-First National Bank. He served as president of the Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad Company, promoting transportation links between the Puget Sound region and the interior, and he invested in the Great Western Iron and Steel Company, reflecting his interest in the industrial development of the Pacific Northwest.

Beyond politics and business, Denny played a significant role in the cultural and educational foundations of Seattle and Washington Territory. He was instrumental in the founding of the University of Washington and donated much of the land for its original site in downtown Seattle. On the present University of Washington campus, Denny Hall, the former administration building completed in 1895, bears his name in recognition of his contributions. Later in life he was active in the Society of Washington Pioneers and authored a memoir, Pioneer Days in Puget Sound, in which he recounted the early history of settlement in the region and his own role in it. His memoir reveals both his cautious temperament and his view of the move from Portland to Puget Sound as a “desperate venture,” a characterization that later historians have echoed, while noting that it was perhaps the only truly risky undertaking of his otherwise conservative life.

Denny’s personal character and beliefs strongly influenced his public actions. He was an ascetic and a devout, politically conservative Christian, opposing measures such as a divorce law on religious grounds. A lifelong teetotaler, he refused to sell liquor in his store, directing customers instead to purchase spirits directly from ship captains so that he would not be party to the transactions. Despite his general conservatism, he supported the right of women to vote and in 1854 introduced legislation in the territorial legislature to allow white women aged 18 and older to vote; the proposal was defeated, but it marked him as an early advocate of women’s suffrage in the region. Known as a generally dour man, he nevertheless displayed flashes of dry wit, as in his memoir’s account of his failed 1853 attempt to agree with David Swinson “Doc” Maynard on a joint plat of Seattle. Denny wrote that Maynard, “who occasionally stimulated a little,” had that day taken enough liquor to feel he was “not only monarch of all he surveyed, but what Boren and I had surveyed as well.” A later professional engineering review conducted for the city showed that Denny, not Maynard, had been in error about the direction the streets should run and had in fact violated the law in his plat of the city.

Arthur Armstrong Denny died in Seattle on January 9, 1899. His legacy as a founder and builder of Seattle continued to be recognized long after his death. In 1962 he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, honoring his role as a leading pioneer of the American West. His name endures in the geography and institutions of Seattle, in the historical memory preserved by his writings, and in the civic and educational structures he helped to establish in Washington.