Part 29 (2/2)

Louisa Boren Denny, her sister, then unmarried, relates the following incident:

”At Alki Point one day, I stood just within the door of the cabin and Mary stood just inside; both of us saw an Indian bob up from behind the bank and point his gun directly at my sister Mary and almost immediately lower it without firing.”

Mary A. Denny, when asked recently what she thought might have been his reason for doing so replied, ”Well, I don't know, unless it was just to show what he could do; it was Indian Jim; I suppose he did it to show that he could shoot me if he wanted to.”

Probably he thought to frighten her at least, but with the customary nerve of the pioneer woman, she exhibited no sign of fear and he went his way.

They afterward learned that on the same evening there had been some trouble with the Indians at the Maple Place and it was thought that this Indian was one of the disaffected or a sympathizer.

Mrs. Mary A. Denny moved about from place to place, living first in the cabin at Alki Point, then a cabin on Elliott Bay, on the north end of their claim, then another cabin near the great laurel tree, on the site of the Stevens Hotel, Seattle. After a time the family went to Olympia.

Her husband was in the Land Office, was a member of the Territorial Legislature and Delegate to Congress; all the while she toiled on in her home with her growing family.

They returned to Seattle and built what was for those times a very good residence on the corner of Pike Street and First Avenue, where they had a fine orchard, and there they lived many years.

After having struggled through long years of poverty, not extreme, to be sure, but requiring much patient toil and endurance, their property became immensely valuable and they enjoyed well deserved affluence.

Mrs. Mary A. Denny's family consists of four sons and two daughters; Orion O., the second son, was the second white child born in Seattle.

Catherine (Denny) Frye, the elder daughter, was happily married in her girlhood and is the mother of a most interesting family. Rolland H., Orion O., A. Wilson and Charles L. Denny, the four sons, are prominent business men of Seattle.

Mrs. Denny makes her home with Lenora, the younger unmarried daughter, at her palatial residence in Seattle. The last mentioned is a traveled, well read woman of most sympathetic nature, devoted to her friends, one who has shown kindness to many strangers in times past as they were guests in her parents' home.

CHAPTER VII.

HENRY VAN a.s.sELT OF DUWAMISH.

In the Post-Intelligencer of December 8th and 9th, 1902, appeared the following sketches of this well known pioneer:

”At the ripe old age of 85, with the friends.h.i.+p and affection of every man he knew in this life, Henry Van a.s.selt, one of the founders of King County, and one of the four of the first white men to set foot on the sh.o.r.es of Elliott Bay, died yesterday morning at his home, on Fifteenth Avenue, of paralysis. Mr. Van a.s.selt, with Samuel and Jacob Maple and L. M. Collins, landed in a canoe September 14th, 1851, at the mouth of the Duwamish River, where it enters the harbor of Seattle. They had come from the Columbia River and were more than two months in advance of Arthur Denny, one of the pioneer builders of the city of Seattle. Van a.s.selt's name is perpetuated through the town of Van a.s.selt, adjoining the southern limits of the city. He was well known all over the Puget Sound country, and he was the last living member of one of the first bands of white arrivals, on the sh.o.r.es of Elliott Bay.

”Mr. Van a.s.selt was a Hollander, having been born in Holland April 11, 1817, two years after the battle of Waterloo. He was in his early youth a soldier in the Holland army during its dispute with Belgium. An expert marksman and an indefatigable huntsman, he came to America in 1850, on a sailing schooner, and a year later was traveling the trail from the Central West to California. Instead of going to the land of gold and suns.h.i.+ne, Van a.s.selt headed north, reaching the Columbia River in the fall of 1850. A year later found him crossing the Columbia River, after a short sojourn in the mining camps of Northern California.

With three companions, L. M. Collins, Jacob and Samuel Maple, Henry Van a.s.selt made the perilous journey from the Columbia River to the Sound, where, near Olympia, he boarded a canoe, and after two days' traveling reached the mouth of the Duwamish River. Ascending the stream to the junction of the White and Black Rivers, a distance of only a few miles, he staked out a donation land claim of 320 acres in the heart of the richest section of the Duwamish valley.”

SAID VALUES INCREASED.

”The st.u.r.dy Hollander cleared the valley of its primeval forest of firs, and made it truly blossom with farm products of every description. The land today (1902) is worth $1,000 an acre and upwards. At his death, the aged pioneer, the last of his generation, had in his own name some 100 odd acres of this land.

Not many weeks ago he had sold twenty-four acres of the old homestead as the site of the new rolling mill and foundry to be constructed by the Vulcan Iron Works.

”Mr. Van a.s.selt was not the least interesting, by any means, of the old pioneers of King County. In fact, until his death he was the last living member of the first group of white men to set foot on the sh.o.r.es of Elliott Bay. He was a very devout man, and in the late years of his life, when he had retired from active business, it was his custom to spend part of every Sunday at the county jail, reading to the prisoners excerpts from holy writ and giving them words of hopefulness and cheer. This duty was performed for many years as regularly as was his attendance at the Methodist Protestant church, in this city, of which he had been for thirty years a member. It is to be said of the dead pioneer that he was universally loved and respected, and it was his proudest boast that he had never made an enemy in his life.

This was literally true.

”Crossing the plains in 1850, young Van a.s.selt was of great a.s.sistance to his party in procuring game and in driving the hostile Indians away, because of his superior marksmans.h.i.+p, which he had acquired as a hunter on the estates of wealthy residents of his native country. He landed at Oregon City, Ore., in September, 1850, and the ensuing winter he spent in mining in California. He acc.u.mulated a considerable sum, and, lured by stories of the richness and vastness of the great Northwest, he returned to Portland in 1851, and, crossing the Columbia, made his way to the Sound country. On this trip he was accidentally wounded, the bullet being imbedded in his shoulder. In the days of the Indian troubles on the Sound, Van a.s.selt was safe from the attacks of the hostiles, who held him in superst.i.tious reverence because of the fact that he carried a bullet in his body. They believed that he could not be killed by a tomahawk. This fact, perhaps, had much to do with his escape from a.s.sa.s.sination at the hands of the hostiles in the Indian war of 1855.

”Jacob and Samuel Maple, who with L. M. Collins accompanied Mr.

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