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biography
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Denny, Major Ebenezer, an officer in the revolutionary war, in the expeditions of Harmar and St. Clair against the western Indians, and in the war of 1812, was born at Carlisle, Cumberland county. Pa., on the 11th of March, 1761, being the eldest son of William Denny and Agnes (Parker) Denny. The mother was possessed of marked energy and intelligence, and a devout Christian. She was accustomed to attribute the preservation of her son amid perils by sea and in the hour of battle to a gracious providence, but her friends, to the fervent prayers of that pious mother. At the early age of thirteen he was intrusted with dispatches for the commandant at Fort Pitt, crossing the Alleghany mountains alone, lying out in the woods at night. He was described at this time as "a slender, fair, blue-eyed, red-haired boy." In two of these expeditions across the mountains he was chased into Fort Loudon by the Indians. For a time he was employed in his father's store at Carlisle, but learning that a letter of marque was about to sail from Philadelphia for the West Indies,he shipped as a volunteer. In the stirring encounters with the enemy he was always so brave and trustworthy that he was promoted to command the quarter-deck. He was about to ship for a second voyage when he received a commission as ensign in the 1st Pennsylvania regiment in the continental army, which he promptly accepted, abandoning his purpose of further following the sea. The army was now on the march to shut up Cornwallis at Yorktown and work the beginning of the end of the Revolution. Near Williamsburg his regiment had an encounter with the British partisan Simcoe. In his journal Denny says: "Here for the first time saw wounded men; the sight sickened me." As the American army closes around the British, he says: "Army encamped on the bank of the James; part of French fleet in full view." On the 14th of September he says: "Gen. Washington arrived; our brigade was paraded to receive him. Officers all pay their respects. He stands in the door, takes every man by the hand; the officers all pass in receiving his salute and shake. This the first time I had seen the general." Siege operations were at once commenced; the fighting became very warm on all sides, and the siegeworks were pushed with great vigor. "Easy digging," he says; "light sandy ground. A shell from one of the French mortars set fire to a British frigate; she burned to the water's edge and blew up; made the earth shake." On the 17th, he says: "Had the pleasure of seeing a drummer mount the enemy's parapet, and beat a parley, and immediately an officer, holding up a white handkerchief, made his appearance. An officer from our lines ran and met the other, and tied the haadkerchief over his eyes," and thus was that great event, the surrender of Cornwallis, soon accomplished. When the terms of capitulation were definitely agreed on, Ensign Denny was designated to plant the first American flag upon the British parapet. He was subsequently with Gen. St. Clair in the Carolinas, and at Charleston during its investment and after its evacuation; but hostilities were now substantially over, and the long, dreary revolutionary war was at an end. In the subsequent campaigns against the western Indians, conducted by Clark, Harmar and St. Clair, Maj. Denny bore a conspicuous and at times confidential part, being adjutant to Harmar and aid-de-camp to St. Clair. In the signal and disastrous defeat of the army under Gen. St. Clair on the 4th of November, 1791, Maj. Denny was everywhere in the midst of danger and death, but escaped unharmed. When all was over and the surviving remnants of the army had been brought off, Maj. Denny was dispatched to carry intelligence of the great disaster to Gen. Washington, then president. The general was entertaining a party at dinner that evening, and sent his secretary to receive the dispatch, but the aid refused to deliver it to the hands of any but Washington in person, such being his orders. When the president had read far enough to discover the nature of the bad news he broke into a violent passion, and it is asserted that some very bad words escaped the lips of our Washington. In 1794 Denny was commissioned captain, and dispatched in command of a detachment, to protect the commissioners in laying out the town of Presqu' Isle, now Erie; but he was turned back when arrived at Le Bceuf, on account of objections by representatives of the Six Nations to having this point occupied at that time. Maj. Denny had married, on the 1st of July, 1793, Miss Nancy Wilkins, a daughter of Capt. John Wilkins, Sr., originally of Carlisle, but now of Pittsburgh. During the years 1795-96 he resided with his family on his farm, six miles from the city up the Monongahela river. While here he was a candidate for the legislature, but was defeated. In 1796 he was elected one of the commissioners of Allegheny county, when he returned to Pittsburgh, having disposed of his farm. In 1803 he was elected as the first treasurer of the county and again in
1808. In 1804 he was appointed a director of the branch of the Bank of Pennsylvania, established that year at Pittsburgh, the first bank west of the mountains. He was one of the original members of the Society of the Cincinnati.
Maj. Denny was a prominent member of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, was one of its trustees, was the first president of the "Moral Society," formed in
1809, was influential in securing the establishment of the Western Theological school in Allegheny City, and Mrs. Eichbaum remembers Mr. Denny and her father, Mr. Johnston, sitting at the door of the church to
receive the contributions of the worshipers as they entered, an old Scotch custom. On the 1st of May, 1806, Mrs. Denny died, in her thirty-first year, leaving three sons, Harmar, William and St. Clair; and two daughters,
the youngest an infant, which survived but a few days. In the war of 1812 Maj. Denny was commissary of purchases for troops on the Erie and Niagara frontier, pushing forward supplies in emergencies, though at great personal pecuniary sacrifice,
waiving the thirty days' limit allowed him by his contract. When the city of Pittsburgh was incorporated, on the 18th of March, 1816, he was elected its first mayor. In the summer of 1822, while on a visit with his only daughter to Niagara,
he was taken ill, and with difficulty reached his home, where he died on the 21st of July, 1822, in the sixty-first year of his age.
History of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania Chicago : A. Warner & Co., 1889. p. 215-216.
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