Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Tenney, William Jewett

TENNEY, William Jewett, author, b. in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1814; d. in Newark, New Jersey, 20 Sept., 1883. He was graduated at Yale in 1832, and studied medicine in Boston, but abandoned it for law, which he studied in New Haven, Connecticut. After his admission to the bar he opened an office in New York city, but was connected with the "Journal of Commerce" in 1841 and with the “Evening Post” in 1842-'3 and 1847-'8. In 1853 he edited the “Mining Magazine,” and in the same year entered the employ of the firm of D. Appleton and Co., whose “Annual Cyclopaedia” he edited from its inception till his death (1861-'82). He resided for a long time in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he was several times chosen a freeholder, and was for fourteen years in the city council. He prepared the plan for organizing the public-school system there, was president of the school board, and during Buchanan's administration collector of the port. For two years he was presiding judge of one of the criminal courts in Brooklyn, New York, and he was usually known as Judge Tenney. He became a convert to Roman Catholicism. He added a sixteenth volume to Thomas H. Benton's “Abridgment of the Debates of Congress,” and indexed the work (16 vols., New York, 1857-'60), edited “The Queens of England” (1852), and was the author of a “Military and Naval History of the Rebellion in the United States” (1865) and a work on “Grammatical Analysis” (1866). — His wife, Sarah Brownson, author, born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, 7 June, 1839; died in Elizabeth, New Jersey, 30 October, 1876, was the only daughter of Dr. Orestes A. Brownson, and inherited much of her father's power of analysis. She was the author of “Marian Elwood, or How GMs Live” (New York, 1859); “At Anchor” (1865); and “Life of Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, Prince and Priest” (1873).