Dean, Simeon

Born: 1826-08-17 Massachusetts

Died: 1912-06-12 Chicago, Illinois

Flourished: Wisconsin

Simeon Dean, merchant and insurance agent, was born in Raynham, Massachusetts and relocated to Sauk County, Wisconsin by 1850, when he ran unsuccessfully as a Whig candidate for the Wisconsin State Legislature. The following year he was appointed postmaster of Prairie du Sac, and continued in the role when the position was moved to neighboring Sauk City in 1852. Dean operated a store in Sauk City, which burned in 1854. By 1858 he was living in Madison, when he was appointed commissary general of the state militia, and the following year he was an organizer of a Republican young men’s club in the city. In 1861 he was appointed to the position of messenger in the U.S. Senate. Dean registered for the draft in the town of Blooming Grove, Wisconsin in 1863, but there is no further evidence that he served in the Civil War. He married Ellen Maria Watson in 1853 and he was survived by three children.

Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2011); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Westfield, Sauk County, WI, 33; Sauk County Standard (Baraboo, WI), 14 November 1850, 2:3; Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971, NARA Microfilm Publication, M841, 145 rolls, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, 1845-1855, 18:234; Harry Ellsworth Cole, ed., A Standard History of Sauk County Wisconsin (Chicago and New York: Lewis, 1918), 1:486, 490-91; Wisconsin, U.S., Marriage Records, 1820-2004, 25 July 1853, Sauk County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2022); Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), 29 November 1854, 2:2; Madison Daily State Journal (WI), 23 September 1858, 2:2, 16 September 1859, 1:5; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Madison, Dane County, WI, 189; Janesville Daily Gazette (WI), 18 July 1861, 3:1; U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2010); The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), 25 June 1912, 11:7; The Chicago Daily Tribune (IL), 13 June 1912, 17:6; Gravestone, Forest Hill Cemetery, Madison, WI.