The John Tenny Family, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana
Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Sandra McLellan, Apr. 2006
Special thanks to Jim Perrin for donating it to the archives.

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THE JOHN W. TENNY FAMILY

BY JIM PERRIN, Local Historian

A native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Dr. John Watson Tenny helped a generation 
of Ponchatoula residents with improved dental health.  John Tenny was born in May 
1854 and was the son of Nathaniel Brooks Tenny (b. ca. 1807 in Massachusetts) and 
Jane Beasley (b. ca. 1821 in North Carolina). 

John attended college at Chapel Hill and came to Louisiana by 1880.  He married 22 
Jan. 1885 in New Orleans to Marie Lucie Mel De Fonteney.  About fifteen months 
later Lucie died (21 April 1886) in New Orleans at the age of 23. 

John married secondly in 1896 to Ada Rebecca Nesom of Ponchatoula, widow of John 
Warren Overdier, who had died the previous fall.  Ada was born in May 1859 in 
Clinton, Louisiana, and was the daughter William Frank Nesom and Lenora Jane 
Durbin.

Ada died 13 Jan. 1931 in Ponchatoula and was buried in the Springfield Cemetery.  
After decades of service to the people of Ponchatoula, Dr. Tenny died 22 Oct. 1934 
after being injured in an automobile accident two weeks before his death.  He was 
buried beside Ada in the Springfield Cemetery.  His death marked the passing of 
another of Ponchatoula's nineteenth century health care professionals.

Anyone with questions, comments or suggestions for future articles, may contact 
Jim Perrin at 386-4476.