The 1909 Tenney Cyclone

This past Spring, I had the opportunity to speak at the state Medical Assistant conference. It was a unique speaking engagement. I mean, what does THE TENNEY QUILT have to do with Medical Assistants? Well, as it turned out, it was one of my best events ever in terms of book sales, and it received great reviews. The gist of my presentation was to relate the characteristics of many of my Tenney women to the characteristics that these Medical Assistants needed as part of their jobs and in the process, told the stories of the Tenney women.

Some days after that event a young woman named Holly, who had purchased a book after my presentation, sent me an email and told me an interesting story. She had purchased two books, figuring that her 78-year-old mother would be interested in reading the book. When Holly presented the book to her mother as a gift, her mother thought that the name “Tenney” sounded familiar. A while later that day as Holly was still visiting at her mother’s home and her mother had been paging through the book, Holly heard a gasp. Her mother had just come upon the “Voss” name in THE TENNEY QUILT. She quickly went and rifled through her father’s (Holly’s grandfather’s) postcard collection and returned with two old past cards.

The two postcards contained photos of a debris-strewn Voss farm, both with identical inscriptions: “BUILDINGS ON VOSS FARM WRECKED BY CYCLONE MAY 20, 09. TENNEY, MINNESOTA.” Apparently when Holly’s grandfather was a boy, he collected postcards. That boy’s father (Holly’s great grandfather) traveled the state as did so many young men, working the fields at planting or harvest time or both. He sent postcards to his young son when he was away from home. He had most likely worked at the Voss farm during the 1909 time frame. Holly’s mother had looked through this postcard collection many times, so the names “Voss” and “Tenney” had stuck in her mind. Have any of you heard stories of this storm? There are several members of the Voss family on the quilt and if I remember correctly, some of them lived somewhere between Tenney and Tintah. Or was it Nashua? Members of the Voss family who appear on the Tenney Quilt are Mathilda/Tillie (Kath) Voss, who was the wife of Herman Voss, Tillie's two sons, Harry and Ed Voss, Harry's wife Anna (Ann) and son Delmer.

I thank Holly for sending me images of the postcards, accompanied by this fascinating story. (I was not able to post the photos to his blog due to the format in which the photos were sent to me). I am amazed at the number of people whose lives are connected in some way to Tenney. Even those folks with no apparent connection to Tenney sometimes find a connection, such as Holly did, in a most unusual way!