My Genealogy Hound

HON. HARMAR DENNY. Mr. Denny was born at Pittsburgh, Pa., May 13, 1794. He was the eldest son of Maj. Ebenezer Denny, a revolutionary patriot and first mayor of Pittsburgh. His mother, Nancy (Wilkins) Denny, was a daughter of Capt. John Wilkins, also of revolutionary fame, and a sister of William Wilkins, United States senator, minister to Russia, and secretary of war. He was named for Gen. Harmar, a bosom friend and brother officer of the father. He was educated at Dickinson College, where he graduated in 1813, and read law and was admitted to the bar in November, 1816. He was subsequently taken into partnership with Henry Baldwin, with whom he had studied, and who afterward became a judge of the United States supreme court. Mr. Denny soon attained a high rank as a lawyer, and was intrusted with responsible positions in state and nation. He was elected to the state legislature, where he exercised a commanding influence. He was elected a member of the national Congress, in which body he served from Dec. 7, 1829, to March 3, 1837. In 1837 he was elected a member of the convention called to revise the constitution of Pennsylvania, and in that body, composed, as it was, of the ablest men in the state, he labored with untiring zeal and industry, and was gratified with seeing many of the provisions which he advocated incorporated in that instrument. Perceiving the necessity to the prosperity of his native city for enlarged means of communication with the seaboard, he strongly advocated the construction of the Pennsylvania railroad, and subsequently became president of the Pittsburgh & Steubenville railroad. He encouraged the importation and improvement of farm-stock and the use of improved implements in agriculture. The cause of education found in him an unwavering friend. He was a trustee of the Western University of Pennsylvania, and one of the board of examiners, as also a director of the Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny City. He was elected in 1848 a member of the American Philosophical society. In 1850 he was nominated to fill the unexpired term in Congress caused by the resignation of Moses Hampton, but declined. He was a member of the electoral college which chose Gen. Harrison president in 1840. In early life he became a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, during the ministry of Rev. Dr. Herron, and being possessed of an ample fortune in addition to his eminent talents and piety, it rendered his church relation one of great usefulness. On April 12, 1829, he was ordained a ruling elder, which position he held till the close of his life. In the church sessions and higher courts his deliverances, though modestly given, commanded great respect. At the inauguration of the Allegheny county auxiliary of the American Bible society, in 1818, he was elected its first president. While a member of Congress he was an active member of the congressional prayer-meeting.

He married, Nov. 25, 1817, Miss Elizabeth F. O’Hara, daughter of Gen. James and Mary (Carson) O’Hara, and their children and several of their grandchildren have followed in the pious footsteps of their parents. Mr. Denny’s life was not a long one, but an eminently active and useful one. After a lingering and painful illness he died, Jan. 29, 1852, in the fifty-eighth year of his age.

The following paragraph from the “Presbyterian Encyclopedia,” from which many of the facts contained in this memoir have been drawn, may with propriety close this sketch: “His character was well established and symmetrical. No one ever questioned his rigid integrity, his profound sense of honor and honesty, the moral purity of his life or the perfect sincerity of his religious professions. He was a person, too, of very prepossessing features, whose appearance, however, had become prematurely venerable. He was erect and gentlemanly in his bearing, and though somewhat reserved and dignified, life—domestic, social, civil and ecclesiastical —he was truly and impressively a good man, and his life was without reproach.”