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James C. Denny

Indiana Attorney General, 1872—1874

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 10, 2025
Entity authorityQ112135614 ↗
Source-derived summary

James Cook Denny (August 8, 1829 – December 1887) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician who served as the ninth Indiana Attorney General from November 3, 1872, to November 6, 1874.

Biography

Early life and education

Denny was born in Knox County, Indiana. His mother, Catherine (née Cook) Denny was from Central Tennessee. His father, William Denny (from Kentucky) served as clerk of Knox County from 1852 to 1862 and also served in the Union Army as a captain of Company E of the 51st Indiana Infantry Regiment, though he died the same month he joined the army. His younger brother, William N. Denny, who served both in the 14th Indiana Infantry Regiment and then in the 51st Regiment, attained the rank of colonel during the war and was held as a prisoner of war in Libby Prison.

James Denny grew up on the family farm. He attended various schools in Knox County before entering Vincennes University. At age twenty-one, he became a store clerk in Vincennes, a job he held for four years. Two years after becoming a store clerk, he began to read law in his free time. Denny left his job at the store after four years to become deputy Knox County Clerk.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James C. Denny” is indiana Attorney General, 1872—1874. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Denny and Indiana, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1829, 1887, 1872, 1874—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, James, Denny and Indiana is the immediate research focus.
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The phrase “indiana Attorney General, 1872—1874” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q112135614. The first chronological checks are 1829, 1887, 1872 and 1874.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “James C. Denny” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.