N. Boyd Tenney
Nathan Boyd Tenney was an Arizona State representative and senator.
He was born on June 22, 1915, in Stanley, Arizona, on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, one of ten children, including brother Lyman Tenney. He grew up in rural Arizona where his father worked in the Angora goat business. His father relocated the family when he decided to quit that business and work a cattle homestead instead. When Boyd was almost ten years old, his father moved the family to Prescott and went back into the Angora goat business.
After he completed high school, he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Mexican Mission and later the Spanish American Mission. He married Rachel Luella Teeples in Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 10, 1939, and they became the parents of eight children.
He worked for a time in the grocery business, the wood business, and the feed business. He was also a rancher. His feed store businesses was Tenney Feed and Livestock.
He was a member of the House of Representatives from Yavapai County from 1962 to 1964. He served from that county in the State Senate from 1964 to 1982.
His accomplishments during his time in office include: establishing community colleges in Mohave and Yavapai counties, aiding in the creation of five state parks, securing funding for transportation and rural roads, and initiating legislation that helped restore the Governor’s Mansion at the Sharlot Hall Museum. He served as the vice chairman, and then the chairman, of the Senate Appropriations Committee, chairman of the Joint Budget Committee, and chairman of the Natural Resources Committee.
In gratitude for Tenney’s work in establishing Yavapai Community College, the Yavapai College Board renamed the college library the Boyd Tenney Library. He served on the Boards of Yavapai College and the Sharlot Hall Museum, and received the first Sharlot Hall Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the Museum.
His wife Rachel passed away in December 1966. He then married Madge Moline Haines in 1997. He died on December 6, 2005. Upon his death, the Arizona House of Representatives introduced a resolution to honor him.
