Tennent Family, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Sandra McLellan, Aug. 2005
Special thanks to Jim Perrin for donating it to the archives.

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THE TENNENT FAMILY


BY JIM PERRIN, Local Historian

 Of Irish ancestry, William Tennent was born about 1830 in the state of New York.  
He married in 1858 to Margaret Foy, also a native of New York.  William and 
Margaret lived in New Orleans for a time before moving to Ponchatoula by 1870.  
William may have lived in Ponchatoula as early as 1862 for there was a William 
Tennent who enlisted in the Confederate Army at Ponchatoula in one of the 
companies composed mostly of local residents.  At any rate, William Tennent of New 
York was working as a railroad agent in Ponchatoula 1870, and living with William 
and Margaret were their three children Kate age 6, Frederick age 4, and the baby 
Margaret, who had been born in February 1870.  

 About 1871 William moved his family to the Pass Manchac area.  William had 
contracted with Ponchatoula resident William Akers to construct a home for him at 
the edge of Pass Manchac in waist deep water about seventy or eighty feet east of 
the railroad track on Jones Island.  The wooden house was large enough so that 
William could take on one or two boarders from time to time.  One who boarded with 
the Tennents was James B. Hunter, who was the telegraph operator at the railroad 
depot in Manchac.  A Mr. Corbin and William Burbringer also operated a grog shop 
{grog is watered down whiskey} in the Tenennt house for a while.

 William Tennent left the employment of the railroad company and after December 
1874 he worked as a fisherman and fish merchant at Manchac.  At times he hired 
others living at Manchac to work for him, buying their fish and crabs and shipping 
the catch to New Orleans by train.

 In December 1872 Dr. James M. Alexander and his wife Eleanor purchased 738 acres 
of land at Manchac on Jones Island for $1,200.  Soon after purchasing the land Dr. 
Alexander noticed the Tennent house on what Alexander claimed as his land and 
asked William Tennent to vacate the area.  After asking Tennent to leave three 
times Dr. Alexander went to court in 1875 to have William Tennent and his family 
evicted from the property.  Tennent replied in court that he did not live on 
Alexander's land and in fact did not live on anyone's land as the Tennent house 
was in waist deep water in Pass Manchac which was a public waterway.  Tennent 
testified that there was never any dry land under his house and that even during 
the dry seasons he had caught a bucket full of crabs and a bucket full of perch 
from his porch.  After testimony from William Akers of Ponchatoula, and Manchac 
residents W. J. Keifer and Bill Williams, William Tennent and Dr. Alexander, the 
district court in Amite ruled in favor of Tennent.  The case was appealed to the 
state supreme court which in March 1878 agreed with the district court and found 
for William Tennent.

 William Tennent and Margaret were divorced in Sept. 1876.  William married 
secondly 3 Nov. 1879 in New Orleans to Laura Rideau Boehm, widow of Johannis 
Boehm.  William and Laura had children including a daughter born in 1880 in New 
Orleans, and another daughter Laura who was born in 1882.  His daughter Laura 
Tennent was living with her half-sister Marie Virginia Boehm Perrin in 
Madisonville in 1900.

Margaret married secondly to John P. Brecher, and they were living in Manchac in 
1880 with Margaret's three Tennent children.  Mr. Brecher, who was born about 
1855, was working as a painter when the census was conducted in 1880.   He is 
believed to be the John P. Brecher, age 25, who died in 1881 in New Orleans, and 
who succession records in Tangipahoa Parish indicate he was a resident of Manchac.

 Margaret and William Tennent's son Frederick J. Tennent was born about 1866.  He 
married 13 Nov. 1890 at St. Joseph's Church in Ponchatoula to Nellie Duffy, 
daughter of Thomas and Sarah Duffy.  Fred Tennent died 9 Oct. 1894 at the age of 
28, and was buried in the Wetmore Cemetery west of Ponchatoula.  Nellie Duffy 
Tennent remarried to Frank Rehorst.

 Little is known by this writer about the later stages of William Tennent and 
Margaret Foy Tennent Brecher's lives and further information is needed concerning 
these and other early settlers of Manchac.
  
Anyone with comments, questions, or additional information about Ponchatoula's rich 
heritage may call Jim Perrin at 386-4476