My Genealogy Hound

OTTO K. DEAN. The world is full of men who have achieved success with the assistance of parents, relatives and friends, but a self-made man, one thrown upon his own resources at a tender age, to whom the world can point, before his fortieth year is reached, and say, “there is a successful man,” is indeed rare. Such a man is the one whose name heads this sketch. O. K. Dean is a son of Jerome J. and Adaline N. (Kip) Dean, and was born at Sherman, Chautauqua county, New York, July 27, 1856. The paternal grandfather Dean came to Chautauqua county and settled in Sherman, where he became the proprietor of a tannery and followed the trade of a shoemaker. He was of English extraction and a member of the Methodist church. He married and reared a family of three children, one son and two daughters: Anna, who became Mrs. Miller; Mary J., wife of Miles Clark; and Jerome J. (father). Mr. Dean died and was buried at Sherman. The maternal grandfather, Benjamin Kip, was identified with the early prosperity of the town of Sherman. He was born in Johnstown, N. Y., on April 27, 1797, being of German parentage. On February 23, 1823, he married Esther Miller, of Newark, this State, by whom he had four children: Marinda became the wife of Samuel Hall; Frances, twice married, first to Mr. Coolie, and later to Rev. D. M. Sliver; Adaline N. is the mother of subject; and Jennie, who married Rev. E. T. Green. The town of Sherman was at first called Kipville, where Mr. Kip died in 1850.

O. K. Dean was educated in the Sherman schools until his fifteenth year, when he was a student in the Fredonia Normal, finishing that course in 1873, and returned to the academy at Sherman in 1876. After this he began a clerkship with J. T. Green, of Sherman, and remained there two and a half years. Succeeding this he clerked eighteen months for De Forest Wills, at Jamestown. Sickness then attacked him, and for nine months he was an invalid, but his constitution vanquished the fever, and for a while he tilled the soil of a small farm near Sherman. When President Garfield took charge of the government, the river and harbor improvement work was revived and Mr. Dean was employed on Lake Michigan. In April, 1882, he came to Fredonia, and kept books for H. J. Putnam in that gentleman’s fine grocery store, and nine months later, in partnership with his brother, bought the Sherman hotel and livery, which was conducted until 1887, when, renting his interest in the hotel, he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he remained nine months. Returning east at the expiration of that time, he engaged temporarily with Finch &. Co., tobacconists, of Corry, Pa., and later bought a coal, wood and building material business, which he is now conducting, doing a wholesale business of sixty thousand dollars per annum. Mr. Dean is a good business man, has had a varied and practical experience, and knows how to do business and how to make business friends. Forest Lodge, No. 166, F. and A. M., of Fredonia, has honored him with the chair of Worthy Grand, he now being a Past Grand, and is also a member of the Royal Arcanum.

On January 20, 1882, he married Edith, daughter of George and Lavina Vermilya, of Columbus, Pa., where the former is a farmer. They have two children: Jerome J., born February 25, 1883; and George V., born July 31, 1885.

During Mr. Dean’s peregrinations his comprehensive mind saw good investments in different localities, and he is now owner of a coal property of two hundred acres at Pittsburg, Kan., and one hundred and sixty acres at Joplin, Mo., covering zinc deposits of great value. Mr. Dean’s mother died in 1867, and he was bound to a Mr. Flagort, who did not treat him kindly. He lived afterwards with J. P. Hall, near Mineral Point. From this beginning he has risen, thrust aside the barriers, and to-day is a solid man, commanding the esteem of all. His father died September 13, 1882.