lawyer, newspaperman, politician, b. Grand Isle, Vt. He moved with his parents to Elyria, Ohio, in 1833, and in 1841 was admitted to the Ohio bar. In 1842 he established the Elyria Lorain Republican, and in 1843 served as prosecuting attorney for Lorain County. He moved to Galena, Ill.., in 1845, where he established the Galena Jeffersonian with his brother, Henry W. Tenney. In 1846 he moved to Madison, purchased an interest in the Wisconsin Argus, and was its publisher (1851-1852) in partnership with S. D. Carpenter (q.v.). Tenney was territorial printer (1847-1848), and in 1853 was appointed assistant state geologist. In 1854 he established the Wisconsin Patriot in partnership with J. T. Marston, but withdrew from the paper a short time later. A Republican, he was a member of the state assembly (1857), and in the same year was appointed a regent of the Univ. of Wisconsin. He was comptroller of the state treasury (1858-1859), paymaster of the Union army (1862-1864), and from 1865 to 1869 was in charge of mail service for Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Dakota. During the 1870's he served on the editorial staff of several Chicago newspapers. He was co-author with David Atwood (q.v.) of Memorial Record of the Fathers of Wisconsin (1880), and was one of the organizers and original members of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (1849). Madison Wis. State Journal, Mar. 13, 1906; Madison Democrat, Mar. 14, 1906; Proc. State Bar Assoc. Wis., 7 (1906); Catalogue Newspaper Files . . . State Dist. Soc. Wis. (Madison, 1911); H. A. Tenney, Genealogy of the Tenney Family (Madison, 1875); H. A. Tenney Papers.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has manuscripts related to this topic. See the catalog description of the Horace A. Tenney Papers for details.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]