The name of Tiffany is one of the oldest and best known in Barrington, Rhode Island, where several generations of the family have participated in business and public affairs. Ebenezer Tiffany has lived up to the family traditions in both respects and has long served as town treasurer.
Ebenezer Tiffany was born in Barrington, April 7, 1869, son of Ebenezer Tiffany and his wife, Harriet L. Goodwin, who was born in Norton, Massachusetts, and is now deceased, and a direct descendant of an early Ebenezer Tiffany who was born at Barrington, Rhode Island, served during the Revolutionary War, and spent two years in the Rhode Island General Assembly. The grandfather of our subject, Ebenezer Tiffany by name also, was town treasurer and later town clerk, and the family was listed among the founders of the town of Barrington. On the maternal side, the earliest American ancestors were John Howland and Richard Warren, of the “Mayflower.” The father of our subject, a native of Barrington, engaged in the ice business there from 1866 to 1899 and served as town treasurer from 1874 to 1899.
The son was educated in the Barrington schools and graduated from Warren High School. His business association with his father in the ice business continued until 1899, when the father died, and the son assumed entire control of the enterprise, conducting it successfully until 1919. In 1899 also he took over the public office so long and honorably filled by his father and became town treasurer of Barrington, an office he has now held for nearly three decades. His political allegiance is given to the Republican party, in which he is influential. Mr. Tiffany was a member of the Barrington Town Council from 1896 to 1899, was representative to the General Assembly in 1909, and State Senator in 1910 and 1911. He is a communicant of St. John’s Episcopal Church, of which he is treasurer and senior warden, and he belongs to the Sons of the American Revolutions and to the Society of Colonial Wars.
Ebenezer Tiffany married, in 1905, Jeannette L. Mowry, born in Providence, daughter of Joseph E. Mowry, principal of the Federal Street Grammar School for many years.
Source: Carroll, Charles. Rhode Island: Three Centuries of Democracy, vol 3 of 4. New York: Lewis historical Pub. Co., 1932.