Tennant Station has a real Tennant behind it
– William Tennant, an immigrant from England. The native
Londoner, aged 19, came to San Francisco with his parents in 1849,
just as the gold rush was taking off, and worked as the state’s
only piano tuner and maker, then settled in the Morgan Hill area in
the early 1850s.
Tennant Station has a real Tennant behind it – William Tennant, an immigrant from England.
The native Londoner, aged 19, came to San Francisco with his parents in 1849, just as the gold rush was taking off, and worked as the state’s only piano tuner and maker, then settled in the Morgan Hill area in the early 1850s.
At the time, the tiny town was called Butterfield; it later became Morganhill and then Morgan Hill after incorporation in November 1906.
In 1852, Tennant bought the just-built, two-story, 20 by 20-foot 21-Mile House, a Butterfield Stagecoach stop that promptly burned down, as wooden buildings were prone to do, since heat, light and cooked food all came from open flames.
He was just 22 years old.
Tennant rebuilt and enlarged the building and made it into a successful business on El Camino Real (Spanish for ‘the king’s road), near the southwest corner of what is now Monterey Road and West Edmundson Avenue.
The famed St. Louis-to-San Francisco Butterfield Overland Express Stage route went straight up Monterey (then called El Camino Real). The 21-Mile House operated as a stage stop while the express operated in the early 1860s, delivering mail and newspapers to news-starved Californians.
Besides offering food, drink, a change of horses and rest for travelers along “the road to Monterey” and, ultimately, to the Mexican border or Sonoma, Tennant opened a post office (1871) and a blacksmith shop (1876). He also farmed 1,200 acres near the stage stop, building on his early success as a piano tuner.
The most notorious event at the Tennant stage stop occurred in July 1873 when Tiburcio Vasquez and his gang of desperados robbed the clerk, a traveling salesman and two farm hands of $155; Tennant missed the action since he was in Europe at the time. Other reports claim Tennant himself was robbed of $800 but that appears to be untrue.
As was his habit, Vasquez continued to follow a life of crime and, in August 1873 he robbed and murdered three people in Tres Pinos (now Paicines), was brought to San Jose and hanged in 1875.
Travelers were sometimes startled by the presence of a snarling grizzly bear tied to one of the big oak trees that shaded the building. Common to the area at the time, the huge bears were used to entertain the locals in bear-baiting contests, an occupation akin to cock fighting and now totally outlawed.
Tennant married Margaret McAllister in 1866 and the couple had four daughters: Mary, Isabella, Emily and Sarah. By now a pillar of the community, he served as a director of the Bank of Gilroy and the Santa Clara Agriculture Society.
Margaret Tennant died in 1882 and Tennant in 1885 at age 55 during a rest at the Gilroy Hot Springs, in which he was a part owner.
Tennant Road near Edenvale is named by William Tennant’s uncle John, who farmed there along Coyote Creek.
Oddly enough, though Tennant and the 21-mile house are commemorated by a bronze monument plaque in the little park in front of Jamba Juice/PetCo/Starbucks and watched over by huge oak trees, it is the shopping center across the street that carries the Tennant name. The park is in Vineyard Town Center and has the best view in town of El Toro (called Murphy’s Peak during Tennant’s tenancy) and the western hills.
Another monument with plaque was erected across the street at Tennant Station, between Rosso’s Furniture Store and Bank of the West.
When construction on Vineyard Town Center was about the begin in 1988, the city organized an archeological investigation to uncover artifacts of the stage stop, many of which can be seen in the Morgan Hill Historical Museum, behind the library on West Main Avenue. Call 779-5755 for hours.
Other families owned the 21-mile house after Tennant’s death, replaced it in 1917 with a stucco building and, moving with technology, installed a gas station, phasing out the horse service as travel by horse turned into horseless carriage travel.
After the 21-mile house was torn down – dates vary – the Tennant name adorned only the road that runs from the one-time stagecoach way station into the east foothills – until Oakland-based Connolly Development, Inc. built the Tennant Station shopping center.
Phase one of the $16 million center was first opened in November 1981 with a 150,000-square-foot Safeway, as the anchor tenant. Sprouse-Reitz, Bertelli’s Drugs and a savings and loan, plus Bank of the West and Sizzler, both still in place, complemented Baskin-Robbins, a dry cleaners, laundromat, fashion shops, travel agency, book store, natural food store and an auto parts store, plus a three-screen movie theater.
Phase two opened in 1983 and included Ford’s Department Store and more shops.
