JOHN WARD DEAN (1815-1902)

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V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 27, July 3, 2016, Article 12

John Lupia submitted the following information from his Encyclopedic Dictionary of Numismatic Biographies for this week's installment of his series. Thanks. As always, this is an excerpt with the full article and bibliography available online. This week's subject is John Ward Dean, an Early American historian and expert on American Colonial Numismatics. -Editor

John Ward Dean (1815-1902), was born in Wiscasset, Lincoln County, Maine, on March 13, 1815, the fifth of six children, son of Charles (-1829)and Patience Tappan Dean.

Dean is a noted American antiquarian, scholar, writer, editor and publisher with a myriad of associations with noted numismatists, especially his close friend and colleague Jeremiah Colburn (1815-1891), and the New England Historical Genealogical Society, Boston Numismatic Society, and the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia of which he was a corresponding member, and was the first editor for Boston of The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries published at Boston by Dean's friend and colleague Charles Benjamin Richardson (1832-1891). Dean was an Early American historian and scholar and expert on American Colonial Numismatics.

He graduated the Latin School at Mt. Vernon, Maine, which recently had been incorporated in 1792 a little over three decades previous. He then graduated from the English High School, Portland, Maine (which Ebenezer Locke Mason, Jr. also graduated a decade after Dean).

In January 1857 he began as editor of The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries, that published many numismatic articles in the interest of numismatic history and collecting and served as the organ for the Boston Numismatic Society, the Rhode Island Numismatic Association, the American Numismatic Society, and the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, and the American Antiquarian Society. Dean and Colburn were responsible for publishing the Boston Numismatic Society meeting reports.

In 1872 he retired from Dean & Co. and became the full-time Librarian of the New England Historical Genealogical Society. He resigned in 1889 when he became the editor of the New England Historical Genealogical Register. He returned as Librarian in 1892 until his death on January 22, 1902.

The significance and value of the biographical research Dean had undertaken is summed up in the final address given in 1862 by the then stepping down president of the New England Historical Genealogical Society, and noted numismatist, Dr. Winslow Lewis :

"The union of Genealogy with Biography, Heraldry, Numismatics and History was set forth and exemplified fully; but there was a province of Genealogy of peculiar importance, which has seldom been brought before the notice of our Society; and coming from one of eminent professional experience it has the sanction, as it were, of a truth ex cathedra. It is this: "That mental as well as physical qualities are handed down more or less from parent to child, from forefathers to posterity, and that thus, pure and healthy descent is of immense importance. * * * And very frequently we can ascribe the united qualities of valor and of virtue, of great intellect and gentle heart, to the marriage union of parents, whose families were respectively distinguished for these virtues."

His portrait was painted in 1888 by James Harvey Young and is now in the collection of the New England Historical Genealogical Society. A photogravure of the painting was produced by Elson was made after his death.

In 1893 he wrote and published Memoir of Jeremiah Colburn, A.M. portraying him a la sentiment of notions we have just read presented by Dr. Lewis just over thirty years previous.

To read the complete article, see:
DEAN, JOHN WARD (https://sites.google.com/a/numismaticmall.com/www/numismaticmall-com/dean-john-ward)