Tennie B. Burton – 1904 GWS graduation
The Tennie Burton Museum is named for Lima’s first Historian, Tennie Beecher Burton who helped to establish Lima’s earliest museum in 1959 in the Lima Town Hall. The museum was moved to its present location on Rochester Street when this beautiful home was bequeathed by Belle Chapin Tenny to the Lima Historical Society which had been formed in 1973.
C. Belle Chapin Tenny – 1897 GWS graduation
The house was built in the 1830’s, but purchased in 1856 by physician, Dr. Samuel B. Ellis who remodelled it in the Italianate style in 1863. He may have used part of the house for his medical practice. The house was purchased from the Ellis family in 1892 by James H. Crouse, and later, in 1906 by Belle Chapin Tenny, as a home for herself and her parents, and later for herself and her husband, Lavere Tenny. She resided here until her death in 1976, giving piano lessons for many of the town’s children in the front parlour. A graduate of Genesee Wesleyan Seminary and Syracuse University, she also travelled around to the town’s small district schools teaching music. She died at the age of 99, and bequeathed the home to the Lima Historical Society for use as a museum.
