My Genealogy Hound

GEORGE R. DEAN, a prominent newspaper man of Chautauqua county, is a son of Riley and Lucretia (Briggs) Dean, and was born January 10, 1837, in Wyoming county, New York. William Dean, his paternal grandfather, was a native of Onondaga county, of English parentage and emigrated into Chautauqua county, town of Harmony, about the year 1814, and took up a farm near Blockville. He was married three times: first, on October 27, 1799, to Asenith Hamlin, who bore him ten children; on June 29, 1824, he was united to Rebecca Brown, by whom he had three children; and on March 13, 1852, he was again married to Sarah Ingersoll, but without issue. Grandfather George Briggs traces back his ancestry to an early New England family of that name. He settled in Wyoming (then Genesee) county, N. Y., in the year 1808. He was a farmer, a member of the Methodist church at Attica, New York, and was united in marriage to a Miss Esther Paul, by whom he had seven children. Riley Dean, the father of George R., was born in Onondaga county, October 1, 1809, and died in the county of Chautauqua, New York, where he had spent the greater part of his life, on January 17, 1883. While in Chautauqua county, he carried on farming, which had been practically his life-long occupation. He was a whig and later a republican in politics, a member of the Free Methodist church and was the father of four children, two sons and two daughters: Esther, Sophronia, Orlando D. (a lumber producer of Sherman, Michigan), and George R. Riley Dean was married the second time to Mrs. Jonathan Eddy.

George R. Dean united in marriage with Alice Ward, a daughter of William O. Ward, of Sinclairville, New York, March 13, 1864, by whom he has one son, George W.

George R. Dean was educated in the common schools, which by reason of his environments and circumstances, was very meager. He commenced his active career in life by working on a farm until he arrived at the age of sixteen, when he went to Mayville in 1854, and commenced the printer’s trade. His residence has been practically at Mayville ever since. At the breaking out of the civil war in 1861, he held the position of local reporter on the Buffalo Courier, when he received a call from Oscar Johnson and others to take charge of the Dunkirk Union, which he continued to edit and publish until 1867, meanwhile having become owner of the paper. He sold the Union about this time, returned to Mayville, purchased a farm which he still owns, operated it for a short time and then purchased the Dunkirk Journal, which he published one year. In 1880, he established the Chautauqua Era and has conducted it ever since, having besides, in 1882, purchased the Mayville Sentinel, both of which papers are now under his management and editorship. Mr. Dean is a democrat in politics and conducts the Sentinel in the interests of that party. He is a vigorous and talented writer, thoroughly abreast of the great political and social questions which are agitating the American people and in the elucidation of which the editorial columns of his journals are used with much judgment and common sense.