These, with their grown-up sons and daughters, children and grandchildren, began the great journey across the plains, starting from Cherry Grove, Knox County, Illinois, on April 10th, 1851. Four "prairie schooners," as the canvas-covered wagons were called, three of them drawn by four-horse teams, one with a single span, a few saddle horses and two faithful watchdogs, whose value is well known to those who have traveled the wilds, made up the train. The names of these brave-hearted ones, ready to dare and endure all, are as follows: John Denny, Sarah Latimer Denny and their little daughter, Loretta; A. A. Denny, Mary A. Denny and their two children, Catherine and Lenora; C. D. Boren, Mrs. Boren and their daughter, Gertrude; the only unmarried woman, Miss Louisa Boren, sister of Mrs. A. A. Denny and C. D. Boren; C. Crawford and family; four unmarried sons of John Denny, D. T. Denny, James, Samuel and Wiley Denny. The wrench of parting with friends made a deep and lasting wound; no doubt every old pioneer of the Pacific Coast can recall the anguish of that parting, whose scars the healing years have never effaced. The route followed by our pioneers was the old emigrant road along the north side of the Platte River, down the Columbia and up the Willamette to Portland, Oregon Territory, which they afterwards left for their ultimate destination, Puget Sound, where they found Nature so bountiful, a climate so moderate and their surroundings so ennobling that I have often heard them say they had no wish to return to dwell in the country from whence they came. Past the last sign of civilization, the Mormon town of Kanesville, a mile or two east of the Missouri River, the prairie schooners were fairly out at sea. The great Missouri was crossed at Council Bluffs by ferryboat on the 5th of May. The site of the now populous city of Omaha was an untrodden waste. From thence they followed the beaten track of the many who had preceded them to California and Oregon. Hundreds of wagons had ground their way over the long road before them, and beside this road stretched the narrower beaten track of the ox-drivers. On the Platte, shortly after crossing the Missouri, a violent thunderstorm with sheets of rain fell upon them at night, blowing down their tents and saturating their belongings, thereby causing much discomfort and inconvenience. Of necessity the following day was spent in drying out the whole equipment. It served as a robust initiation in roughing it; up to that time they had carefully dressed in white night robes and lay down in neatly made beds, but many a night after this storm were glad to rest in the easiest way possible, when worn by travel and too utterly weary of the long day's heat and dust, with grinding and bumping of wheels, to think of the niceties of dainty living.