NEWBURYPORT – Daniel Tenney loved his native Newburyport. Although he lived and worked as a jeweler in New York City for much of his life, he never forgot where he came from.
Born in 1800, Tenny, who lived to age 81, donated a portion of his wealth in 1863 to buy the Tracy House, which today is the reading room of the Newburyport Public Library.
Fourteen years later he paid for the installation of bronze lamp posts along Pleasant Street in front of City Hall. And in 1878, he donated the life-size, bronze statue of Gen. George Washington by renowned artist John Quincy Adams Ward. The statue of the nation’s first President today greets pedestrians on Bartlett Mall and motorists along High Street.
When legendary clipper ship builder John Currier Jr. was constructing a new two-mast, square-sail brig, he chose to name it for Tenney and have a famed wood carver cast his likeness as the ship’s 9-foot masthead.
Since 2023, that masthead, which hung on the bow of the ship, has been on loan from the Nantucket Historical Assn. (NHA) to the Custom House Maritime Museum (CHMM) here. Although it is unclear why it was ever in Nantucket, the masthead currently hangs in the CHMM’s stairwell.
But not for long, unless Newburyporters save it from going elsewhere. The NHA, where CHMM executive director James Russell was CEO for four years before coming to Newburyport, wants to sell the huge piece of Newburyport’s maritime history.
The NHA has offered the masthead to the CHMM for $25,000, a discounted price that makes it feasible for the Custom House to buy it, Russell said.
If the CHMM cannot raise the funds to buy it, the masthead would probably be offered at public auction where Russell predicts it would sell for $40,000.
The CHMM board of directors, headed by Robert Cronin, has launched an urgent campaign to raise $30,000 by April 17 to preserve the 151-year-old piece of art and keep the Tenney masthead in Newburyport.
“It would be the single most expensive acquisition the Custom House has made in its 50-year history,” Russell said. He thinks it is appropriate to acquire the masthead this year, the nation’s 250th anniversary and Newburyport’s 175th year of being a city.
The Daniel I. Tenney brig was a sailing vessel 212 feet long and 1,686 tons. These fast, maneuverable ships, popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, were used as naval warships and merchant vessels. French artist Edouard Adam’s 1880 painting of the Tenney hangs in the CHMM collection.
“The full-length wood carving of Daniel I. Tenney was the work of Herbert Gleason (1830-1893), a member of a distinguished family of ship carvers in Boston and New York,” wrote Dr. Clarisse Poirier in the Currier Family Papers, 1736-1913, preserved at the Peabody Essex Museum Collections in Rowley.
The Tenney masthead needs substantial work, which Russell described as “Not a small endeavor” to hire a skilled preservation artist.
The masthead will be a dominant feature in the Moseley Gallery, which houses the museum’s collection of art and artifacts from the city’s rich clipper ship era. It is a direct link to the Age of Sail, representing the dominance and maritime heritage that defined Newburyport as a one of the nation’s first maritime hubs.
Russell said there has already been tremendous community support. “The phone calls and emails we are receiving are amazing. They are people I don’t know, who want to contribute.”
An anonymous angel has stepped up to contribute $12,500 in a match campaign, one-to-one that will become $25,000.
Asked if additional $5,000 will be enough to move and preserve the masthead, Russell agreed it may require more. Jay Lesynski of Merri-Mar Yacht Basin, another angel, has offered to donate a custom metal cradle to support the sculpture at a 35- to 40-degree angle so Tenny can face forward as he did on the bow of the ship.
Those who donate $100 or more will receive one ticket to the Boats in Bloom festivities on April 17. Those who donate $250 or more will be listed on a commemorative plaque and will receive two complimentary tickets to the Boats in Bloom festivities.
And the number of young people offering small donations reminds Russell of the pennies students gave in the 1925 “Pennies for Old Ironsides” campaign to save the USS Constitution in Boston harbor. American schoolchildren donated more than $154,000 in coins to restore the severely deteriorated ship. ♦
