The homestead began as a colonial farming, pasturage, and woodland tract with dwelling house, owned by Holman family in the 18th century, the last being Cpl. Samuel Barnard (1747–1799), Jeremiah Holman's maternal grandson. Barnard, his wife Susanna Sargent (1750–1801), and their children removed to the township of Pepperell by 1780, selling the Stow homestead to Eliphalet Tenney (1731–1813) and wife Eunice Boynton (1738–1816) of Newbury, Essex Co.
The property would then remain in the Tenney family for over one hundred and fifty years, inherited and farmed by Moody Tenney (1779–1848) and his wife Anna Bent (1780–1859), their son Jason Bent Tenney (1818–1856) and his wife Sarah Pillsbury (1819–1881), and their son Eliphalet "Life" Jason Tenney (1851–1933), the last of the named Tenneys to work the land. A nephew, George Stow, bought the title from Eliphalet Tenney in the 1930s, and thereafter it was sold to owners outside the family.
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The First Period house, as it was in the 1920s under the care of Eliphalet Tenney — photo from Clara Endicott Sears's Days of Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924).
Tenney House on September 20, 1935 — photo by Harriette Merrifield Forbes. (Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society)
Further Reading