Logan County
The John Denning Family Reunion August 2-3, 2003
150 Years of Family History
Descendant's of John and Rebecca Denning - Celebrate 150 Years as a Family in America
It is not too often a family celebrates 150 years in this country with a family reunion. But this is true for the John Denning Family (the surname was Dinning in England). The descendants of John and Rebecca Denning (and of Jane Robson (John’s first wife) will do that this year in Springfield, Illinois. The family will visit Streator and Lincoln where John and Rebecca Denning lived in Streator from 1870 to 1893, and in 1893 wanting to be closer to their family they moved to Lincoln where only after three years John past away. John came here from County Durham, England in 1851 and his first wife, Jane, their four children joined him 1852 in New York. His first wife past away in Indiana. He then married Rebecca Ann Little of Clay County, Indiana in 1856. In 1862 John and Rebecca settled in Henry County, Illinois and later left for Oregon and caught up with the Hurlbut Wagon Train at “The Bridge”, now Casper, Wyoming, as it was called and headed to the gold fields of the Montana Territories meeting with the John Bozeman (named Bozeman, Montana after him) wagon train along the way and arriving in Virginia City, Montana in August of 1864. John and Rebecca moved back to Illinois in late 1869 after leaving Montana in 1865 and stopping in Missouri for a few years before settling in Streator, Illinois. For almost 30 years John and Rebecca Denning lived here in Illinois and was very active in their community of Streator where they raised eight of their twelve children. John Jr, Henry, Rebecca, Irvin, William, Rosetta, George, Edward are their names and a few of them married in Pontiac, Illinois with the Irvin Denning Family settling in Pontiac where he died and his wife, Harriet Platt, carrying on with their children.
The four children by John’s first wife Jane Robson, who were born in England, were Joseph, Peter, Elizabeth, and Hannah. Joseph and Peter settled in Missouri, and Peter retired in Idaho. Elizabeth married, and raised her family in Montana, before the family came back to Illinois. And Hannah married and settle in Illinois before the family went to Montana. After Hannah’s husband died in a coal mining accident she moved to California with some of her adult children, and another one of her children are honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame who is none other than Iron Joe McGinnity (Joseph Jerome McGinnity).
Our family reunion will be on August 2nd and 3rd of 2003 with family members coming from different areas of our country to join as one. Many of them having never met before, will come and make many new relationships and a new sense of the word family. If you are part of this family and you wish to participate in this reunion please contact Charles W. Brown Jr, 5953 North
Greenview Ave, Apt 2, Chicago, Illinois 60660.
Notes: Newspapers that contained the article - Lincoln Courier, Streator Times- Press. Streator, Illinois, Illinois State Journal Register, Springfield, Illinois, Auburn Citizen, Auburn, Illinois, Pontiac, Illinois and Rock Island. Springfield, Missouri and Richmond, Missouri newspapers, Hamilton, Helena, Boulder, Montana. Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Charles W Brown, Jr., chabro27@sbcglobal.net
