Denny, Thomas S.
Born: 1804-11-15 Leicester, Massachusetts
Died: 1874-10-21 New York, New York
Flourished: New York, New York
Alternate name: Denney
Thomas S. Denny was a broker, banker, philanthropist, and temperance advocate. Born Phineas S. Denny, he changed his first name to Thomas when he was about twenty years old. Denny graduated from Harvard in 1823, then became a broker in New York City. In May 1832, he married Sarah Salisbury Tappan, with whom he had six children before she died in February 1848. By 1850, he was already successful enough that he owned $25,000 in real estate. In April 1851, he married Caroline Louisa Bleecker, with whom he eventually had at least one child. In 1851, he was appointed to the Board of Managers for the New-York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. The next year, he became director for the New York Juvenile Asylum, a position he held until 1870, when he became the organization's treasurer. He also served as a delegate for the American Temperance Union at the 1853 World's Temperance Convention in New York City. In 1858, he formed Thomas Denny and Company, a banking firm based in New York City. He was still serving as treasurer for the New York Juvenile Asylum at the time of his death.
Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: American Publishers' Association, 1904), 296; Christopher Columbus Denny, Genealogy of the Denny Family in England and America (Leicester, MA: C. C. Denny, 1886), 94; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 15, New York, New York County, NY, 264; The Eighth Annual Report of the New-York Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, for the Year 1851 (New York: John F. Trow, 1851), 13-14; Proceedings of the World's Temperance Convention (New York: S. W. Benedict, 1853), 59, 61; Twenty-First Annual Report of the New York Juvenile Asylum (New York: Wm. S. Door, 1873), 13; Fourth Annual Report of the Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities of the State of New York (Albany, NY: Argus, 1871), 142; Documents of the Senate of the State of New York (Albany, NY: Troy Press, 1889), 6:121, 126; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 15, New York, New York County, NY, 76.