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“Grandma Tenney practiced medicine also in Lawrence, mostly obstetrics. When
a law was passed in Kansas barring all but Med. School Grads, & those passing
special exams, Grandma entered and graduated from a Med. School in Chicago
when she was 62 years old, and she practiced medicine as long as she lived –
to a good old age.” Her biography appears in the Memorial and Biographical
Record of Kansas City and Jackson County, Mo. (1896, Pages 563-564),
summarized as follows, and converted to past tense:
Rachel S. Tenney, M. D., was a representative of the medical profession in
Kansas City, belonging to the homeopathic school. She was born in Fayette,
Kennebec County, Maine, December 2, 1831, a daughter of Caleb C. Knowles
(1798-1876) and Rachel (Shaw) Knowles (1800-1893). She was reared and
educated in Illinois, where her parents removed when she was only eleven
years of age. She was married in 1849 to Abijah D. Tenney, and they
practiced medicine together in Lawrence, Kansas. After the death of her
husband in Lawrence, she removed to Independence, Montgomery, Kansas, where
her mother lived; and after her mother died she came Kansas City and opened
a medical office there. Rachel Tenney held degrees in both allopathic and
homeopathic medicine, from the Women’s College of the New York Infirmary,
and the Hahnemann Homeopathic College of Chicago, Illinois. She was widely
known throughout Kansas as a public speaker, having worked with Anna
Dickinson and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was the first president of the
Lawrence, Kansas women’s suffrage organization, and was for eight years the
secretary of the Montgomery County Medical Society of Kansas.
According to a genealogical chart prepared in 1925 by Mrs. Ella Shields,
Sarah Jane Tenney’s father, Abijah D. Tenney was the son of Amos Tenney and
Percy Durkee; and his first wife, Sarah Ann (Anna) Dewey, was the daughter of
Luke Dewey and Deborah Kinney. Their family lines have been traced back for
centuries. Some are appended to this report, and summarized below.
Abijah D. Tenney’s mother, Percy Durkee (born 18 January 1788, Hanover,
Grafton, New Hampshire), was the daughter of Abijah Durkee (born c. 1766,
Woodbury, Litchfield, Connecticut) and Ruth Freeman (born 15 November 1767,
Hanover, Grafton, New Hampshire). Ruth Freeman was the granddaughter of
Edmund Freeman IV (born 30 August 1683, Sandwich, Barnstable, Massachusetts)
and Keziah Presbury, and the great-granddaughter of Stephen Presbury (born
1660, Edgartown, Dukes, Massachusetts) and Deborah Skiffe (born 14 July 1670,
Martha’s Vineyard, Dukes, Massachusetts). Deborah Skiffe was the daughter of
Lydia Snow (born 14 July 1645, Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts), the
granddaughter of Abigail Warren (born c. 1618, England) and the great-
granddaughter of Richard Warren (born 1580, of St. Leonards, London,
Middlesex, England), who came over on the Mayflower.
Sarah Ann (Anna) Dewey, Abijah D. Tenney’s first wife, was a descendant of
Joseph or Josiah Dewey (born 10 October 1641, Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut)
and Hepzibah Lyman (born 1644, Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut). The ancestry
of Hepzibah Lyman has been traced back to Charlemagne, through Thomas Lyman
and Elizabeth Lambert; thence through her great-grandparents Sir William
Lambert and Lady Joane de Umfreville; thence through her great-great-great-
grandparents Gilbert de Umfreville and Maud Countess of Angus; thence through
her great-grandparents Gilchrist Earl of Angus and Marjory Princess of
Scotland; and thence through her grandmother, Isabel de Vermandois, whose
parents, both of them, were descended from Charlemagne.
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