Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound

David Thomas Denny was the first of the name to set foot upon the shores of Puget Sound. Born in Putnam County, Indiana, March 17th, 1832, he was nineteen years of age when he c...

The very thought of it makes the blood tingle and the heart leap. No element was wanting for romance or adventure. Indians, bears, panthers, far journeys, in canoes or on horseb...

The most astonishing change wrought in the aspect of nature by the building of a city on Puget Sound is not the city itself but the destruction of the primeval forest.

Sealth or "Old Seattle," a peaceable son of the forest, was of a line of chieftains, his father, Schweabe, or Schweahub, a chief before him of the Suquampsh tribe inhabiting a p...

Was born in White County, Illinois, on the 1st of June, 1827, and is the daughter of Richard Freeman Boren and Sarah Latimer Boren. Her father, a young Baptist minister, died wh...

The Puyallups and Duwampsh came together in council at Bean's Point, held a trial and condemned and executed the murderer. Old Duwampsh Curley was among the members of this nati...

Midway between Port Townsend and Olympia, in full view looking west from the city of Seattle, is a long tongue of land, washed by the sparkling waves of Puget Sound, called Alki...

Ministers of the Gospel, as well as others, were obliged to turn the hand to toil with ax and saw. Now these tools require frequent recourse to sharpening processes and the mini...

A long roll of honor I might call of the brave men and women who dared and strove in the wild Northwest of the long ago. If I speak of representative pioneers, those unnamed mig...

The following thrilling account, written by herself and first published in the "Weekly Ledger" of Tacoma, Washington, of June 3, 1892, is to be highly commended for its clear an...

John Denny was born of pioneer parents near Lexington, Kentucky, May 4th, 1793. In 1813 he was a volunteer in Col. Richard M. Johnson's regiment of mounted riflemen, and served...

With Faith's clear eye we saw afar In western sky our empire's star, And strong of heart and brave of soul, We marched and marched to reach the goal. Unrolled a scroll, the grea...

"On January 23rd, 1895, Mr. and Mrs. David T. Denny celebrated their forty-second wedding anniversary--and the anniversary of the first wedding in Seattle--in their home at 'Dec...

Thomas Mercer was born in Harrison county, Ohio, March 11, 1813, the eldest of a large family of children. He remained with his father until he was twenty-one, gaining a common...

Samuel L. Simpson wrote this sympathetic poem concerning the old Hudson Bay Company's steamer Beaver, the first steam vessel on the North Pacific Coast. She came out from London...

Early in 1861, the University Commissioners, Rev. D. Bagley, John Webster and Edmund Carr, selected the site for the proposed building, ten acres in Seattle, described as a "bea...

A ponderous volume of biography could scarcely set forth the journeyings, experiences, efforts, achievements and character of this well-known pioneer of the Northwest Coast. He...

I believe this is the first letter I have addressed to you since we removed from Wisconsin, and I feel truly thankful to say that through the infinite mercy of God both my famil...

"Port Townsend, Feb. 15, 1902.--On Friday, February 21, there is to be held in Port Townsend a reunion of old settlers to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the landing at th...

"It was in the early spring of '51 that my father took the emigrant fever to come West, to what was then termed Oregon Territory, and get some of Uncle Sam's land which was dona...

The shores of Lake Union, in Seattle, now surrounded by electric and steam railways, sawmills and manufactories, dwellings and public buildings, were clothed with a magnificent,...

"At the ripe old age of 85, with the friendship and affection of every man he knew in this life, Henry Van Asselt, one of the founders of King County, and one of the four of the...

This well known pioneer joined the "mighty nation moving west" in 1852. From Portland, the wayside inn of weary travelers, he pushed on to Puget Sound, settling in 1853 on Ellio...

It was springtime in an early year of pioneer times. D. T. and Louisa Denny were living in their log cabin in the swale, an opening in the midst of the great forest, about midwa...

It was there the immigrants first feasted on the delicious river salmon, fresh from the foaming waters. The Indians boiled theirs, making a savory soup, the odor of which would...

"The burnt district, after darkness set in, was wild and weird in the extreme. The dry bark to the very tops of the tall trees was on fire and constantly falling off in large fl...

Capt. Roeder came by steamer to Portland and thence made his way to Olympia overland from the mouth of the Cowlitz River. This was in the winter of 1852. The story of this journ...

When his father, Carson D. Boren, went to the gold diggings, William came to the D. T. Denny cottage and remained there for some time. As there was then no boy in the family (th...

With faith's clear eye we saw afar In western sky our empire's star And strong of heart and brave of soul, We marched and marched to reach the goal. Unrolled a scroll, the great...

I Fort Decatur, Jan. 26, 1856 Frontispiece II Chips Picked Up Facing page 17 III Bargaining with Indians at Alki " " 49 IV Indian Canoes Sailing with North Wind " " 81 V Log Cab...

I. SONG OF THE PIONEERS 182 II. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND SKETCHES, JOHN DENNY, SARAH LATIMER DENNY 186 III. DAVID THOMAS DENNY 203 IV. THE FIRST WEDDING ON ELLIOT BAY 257 V. LOUIS...

I. CROSSING THE PLAINS 17 II. DOWN THE COLUMBIA IN '51 34 III. THE SETTLEMENT AT ALKI 41 IV. FOUNDING OF SEATTLE AND INDIAN WAR 63 V. THE MURDER OF McCORMICK 96 VI. KILLING COUG...

I. SAVAGE DEEDS OF SAVAGE MEN 391 II. PIONEER JOKES AND ANECDOTES 415 III. TRAILS OF COMMERCE 436 IV. BUILDING OF THE TERRITORIAL UNIVERSITY 452 V. A CHEHALIS LETTER, PENNED IN...