Tag Archives: Charles Denney

One Hungry Missionary

Charles Denney, Jr. (1849-1937) was the son of English converts of London, baptized when he was 9, and ordained a deacon when he was 15 (which seems unusually early to me, for that time and place). He emigrated when he was 15, ahead of his parents, although he had an uncle and aunt, whom he did not know, to meet him when he reached Utah.

Denney wrote a biographical reminiscence in 1876-77 which includes one of the most engaging (if brief) accounts of emigration I ever recall reading. He remembered the trip as if he were still a 15-year-old rather than as an adult looking back, and recorded the details a boy would notice: the drowning of another boy about his age, his first taste of chewing gum, how his leader on the trail christened each wagon with a name as if it were a ship (Denney traveled with the “Weber Sal”), how he “washed” his shirt by wearing it into the river and rubbing it as best he could, then laying it out on the bank to dry while he went back into the river to wash his body. (You can read his short autobiography to 1877 here.)

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