TFA Projects

2012 TFA Matching Funds Project

The current year's Special Project is adding the names of Thomas Tenney’s children to his headstone.
Please direct your contributions to:

Richard Tenney
Treasurer, Tenney Family Association
220 Banks Rd.
Brooktondale, NY 14817
E-mail: rwt1@cornell.edu

Every donation will be matched $ for $ up to $500 by the Association.

Our relationship with Brightside in Haverhill, MA continues. Our progenitor Thomas is buried there, and any money you wish to donate to the perpetual care of the cemetery and headstone to Thomas can be mailed to Richard and he will mail it to Brightside. As they are already a 501 (c) 3, you will receive a letter from them for tax deductibility purposes. We can ill afford to allow that cemetery to degrade to the point it was before we spearheaded its cleanup and the placement of our progenitor’s headstone. Brightside has received a grant from the State of Massachusetts to assist in the maintenance of this cemetery and work should begin this coming summer to remove dead trees in the section of the cemetery containing the oldest burials, including our Thomas. For anyone interested we still can take donations to aid this effort.

The year will see us make the progress toward the establishment of our own 501 (c) 3 organization. This is vital to our continued efforts to establish a permanent humidity-controlled storage location for our wonderful archives and hopefully the establishment of a Tenney Family Scholarship to be awarded to a deserving Tenney descendant for use toward their continuing education. These three goals, the tax-deductible organization, a permanent location for our archives and a scholarship are all tools that will advertise our family.

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Old Bradford Burial Ground Project
Members of the Tenney Family Association “rediscovered” the Old Bradford Burial Ground (OBBG) in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the later half of the 1990’s. The cemetery dates back to 1665, and is the final resting place of Thomas Tenney. (For more information about Thomas Tenney, check out the History page.) The grounds of the cemetery were over grown with brush, fallen tree limbs, grass and lots of poison ivy. A group of volunteers began the clean up effort to clear off the headstones in an effort to locate Thomas Tenney’s headstone.

September, 2000, saw the first day of the official clean up. Then TFA Curator, Debby Bianchi, did all the “leg work” prior to this time, getting permission from the city and the Bradford Congregational Church (who was responsible for the cemetery). She was then put in contact with an organization in Haverhill called “Bright Side,” a program of the City of Haverhill, whose volunteers mow lawns and plant flowers around the cemeteries and parks all over the city. Bill Rogers, a Bright Side volunteer who mowed the lawn on the front side of the OBBG, graciously went above and beyond by removing hundreds of 10-12’ trees prior to the first work day.

Spring of 2001 saw the proposal to establish a Tenney Family Association Memorial Committee to aid in the restoration. Plans were put in motion to fund and erect a “suitable, dignified and appropriate memorial for our common ancestors,” Thomas and Ann (Mighill) Tenney, to be placed in the cemetery. Clean up, planning, and fund raising took several years to complete.

By 2007, Barron Tenney, a TFA member and resident of Haverhill, accepted the challenge of bringing the past years efforts together with the goal of erecting the memorial headstone in the OBBG by the 2009 TFA Reunion, scheduled to take place in Haverhill on August 14-16.

With a great amount of hard work and dedication by the Cemetery Committee, TFA and local volunteers, and generous donations of time, equipment and money, the Thomas Tenney Headstone Project was ready to be unveiled at the 2009 Reunion as planned (phew!). Debbie Montgomery, TFA Genealogist and Chairperson of the Reunion Committee wrote, “We arrived in Haverhill, Mass for a very special and monumental dedication in honor of our progenitor Thomas Tenney. Some might say a cemetery is a strange place for celebration, but with all the hard work of the Association’s Cemetery Committee and others – the Old Bradford Burial Ground hadn’t looked this good in a very long time and was finally ready for an amazing addition.”

The Ensign Thomas Tenney headstone was unveiled and dedicated in a ceremony on Saturday, August 15, 2009. After opening remarks by Association president, Roger A. Tenney, guest speakers were announced, and acknowledgements and Certificates of Appreciation were presented with much gratitude from members in attendance and those who were unable to attend the ceremony.

Finally, the culmination of years of planning and hard work was unveiled. The Ensign Thomas Tenney headstone was revealed to all, amid a chorus of cheers and applause.

The OBBG remains an on going project of the TFA. Without continued maintenance, it will once more become overgrown, and a portion of our family history will again be lost to those who seek their family origins. The TFA is dedicated to this continuing endeavor.


Thomas Tenney
1614-1699/1700
Progenitor of the
Tenney Families in America
Emigrated from England
Co-founded Rowley, Mass
in 1639

Erected in 2009 by the
Tenney Family Association

For more information about the 2009 TFA Reunion and the dedication of the Ensign Thomas Tenney headstone, go to Reunions.


Dear Ancestor:
Your tombstone stands among the rest
Neglected and alone
The name and date have worn off
This weathered marble stone.
It reaches out to all who care,
It’s too late now to mourn.
You did not know that I’d exist,
You died, and I was born.
Yet each of us are cells of you
In flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our hearts contract and beat a pulse
Entirely not our own.
Dear Ancestor, the place you filled
Some hundred years ago
Spreads out among the ones you left
Who would have loved you so.
I wonder how you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this place
And come to visit you.
-Author Unknown

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The Tenney Family Descendants…IV Volume Work

In 1891, Martha Jane Tenney of Newbury, VT, published her first book, “The Tenney Family, or, The Descendants Thomas Tenney of Rowley, Massachusetts, 1638-1891,” tracing us back to Thomas and Ann (Mighill) Tenney in 1638. Martha Jane (or “MJ” as she is affectionately known over 100 years later) was an invalid, extremely limited in life’s pursuits due to severe asthma. Her life was spent writing letters and speaking with guests and friends in an effort to gather together a genealogy of the Tenney Family. Most of her work reflects the line of Deacon John Tenney (1640-1722), Thomas and Ann’s first child. She published an update to her book in 1904.

Over the years, members of the Tenney Family Association expressed the desire to further update Miss Tenney’s work. In 1984, Tenney Humphrey, TFA Genealogist, and Agnes Tenney Callaway, his successor, began a letter writing campaign to every Tenney they could find. The response was amazing. They gathered five very large boxes of family genealogy, but there was no practical way to index and distribute the information.

In 1997, technology had developed to the point that organizing our updated family heritage was now practical. Our Genealogist, Debbie Montgomery, volunteered to create a database with MJ’s work as the foundation, then adding the information received in the 1980’s. Yes, those five boxes of widely diverse family lines were sent to Debbie!

Inspired by Martha Jane’s work, Debbie not only put out the call for more family information, she compiled genealogical information for all three of Thomas and Ann (Mighill) Tenney’s sons up to 2004. After a truly Herculean effort by Debbie Montgomery and Hal Tenney (as Debbie tells it, “...he was the logistical and financial end of things and it would not have happened without him.”), a four volume set was published in 2007-2009.

The books contain the following:
Volume 1
The majority of this 902 page volume is in text format. Contains basic or general Tenney Family information such as the Family Crest and description; Family Origins in England; Passenger lists of the ship “JOHN” used by progenitor Thomas Tenney and Ann Mighill to come to America 1638 and the allied families listed on the MAYFLOWER; Family Branches defined; general homesteads, histories family stories; cemetery listings; the Magna Charta and Royalty lineages; maps; pictures; main index; and other additional general family information. Also in this first volume is included, in standard genealogical format Thomas and Ann’s family history, their 3 children – Hannah, Mercy and James previously not traced; Thomas’s ancestry of three generations back to 1510 in England and Thomas’ brother William and family.

Volumes 2,3,4
These three volumes will be in standard genealogical format and will essentially follow the format used by M.J. Tenney. Each volume starts with each of the three members of the second generation and contains the complete “known” descendancy of Thomas & Ann’s remaining 3 children.

Volume 2 – John
John, the eldest son of Thomas and Ann (Mighill) Tenney, and wife Mercy Parrat. The 1036 pages in the volume includes documented descendants of John to 2004.

Volume 3 - Thomas, Jr.
Thomas, Jr., second son and 4th child of Thomas and Ann (Mighill) Tenney, and wife Margaret Hidden. The 689 pages in the volume includes documented descendants of Thomas, Jr. to 2004.

Volume 4- Daniel
Daniel, youngest son and 6th child of Thomas and Ann (Mighill) Tenney, and wives Elizabeth Stickney and Mary Hardy. The 839 pages in the volume includes documented descendants of Daniel to 2004.

We all owe a deep debt of gratitude to Martha Jane Tenney and her dedication in documenting this very proud family. As the former Tenney Family Association president, Ken Dubke, stated in his Annual Association meeting address in 1999, “If it wasn’t for Martha Jane Tenney, we probably wouldn’t be here today. Because of her many years of dedicated research and letter writing, most of us are able to trace our Tenney lineage back to Thomas and Ann Tenney of Rowley, Massachusetts.”

Our thanks to Debbie Montgomery, Hal Tenney, the officers and members that helped with this project, and to all of the Tenney family members and friends that filled in so many branches of the Tenney Family tree.

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