George Roger Dean (c1735-1815)

Sgt. George Roger Dean, born circa 1735, had Scots-Irish roots that lay in Dumfries, Scotland. He journeyed with brothers Robert and James to America in the 1770s. Meanwhile, behind in Tobermore, Ulster, Ireland, Dean left his wife, Mary Campbell Dean of Argyllshire, Scotland, a daughter also named Mary and a son, Daniel, born Oct. 20, 1766. It's believed Roger made the crossing to fight for King George and the British Crown against the Colonial Patriots' cause of independence; but on arriving in Philadelphia, then the colonial capital, he was moved instead to enlist instead in Pennsylvania's Colonial Line. As a militia sergeant, Roger later fought for the Patiots' cause in New York and elsewhere.

While an ocean separated Roger and Mary, his Ulster family lost all track of Roger's whereabouts; and Roger, having receiving no recent letters, assumed about 1780 that his European family was also lost. As partial payment for his military service, Roger received lands near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, and so he walked over the Blue Ridge and homesteaded there, eventually beginning a household with a comely postmistress named Rebecca.

Roger's son, reared fatherless in bucolic Tobermore, had a growing curiosity about his father's fate, so at age 18, young Daniel, near penniless, boldly boarded a ship bound for the Port of Philadelphia. Once there, he worked for his keep and searched high and low to locate his lost father -- or his uncles. Daniel wandered through Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, seeking clues, before he received word his father was alive and living on Kentucky's frontier. On the way there, Daniel met and courted an Augusta County, Virginia lass named Elizabeth Jennet Steele who parents also were of sturdy Cumberland Presbyterian stock. Once in Mount Sterling, Daniel quickly found his errant father and learned he and Rebecca had begun a second family.

By 1790, Daniel had written his mother in Tobermore to let her know Roger was living and... productively occupied in Kentucky. He suggested that the Marys book passage, so he might meet them in Wilmington, N.C. Roger and Daniel and set about preparing for their arrival. Meanwhile, Jennett's Virginian father, Robert Steele, informed Daniel that his daughter would not share a house with teh Marys. Before he wed Jennett, Steele said, Daniel must have built a separate home for his new bride, Steele's daughter.

Daniel obligingly did so, but he learned -- almost too late --- that his mother and sister had set said from Ireland and were en route to America. Daniel quickly hiked and ran much of the distance from Mount Sterling, across the Appalachians to Wilmington. He arrived scarcely in time to claim his family before they would have been indentured as servants for seven years, to repay the cost of their Atlantic passage.

Returning to Mount Sterling, Daniel wed Jennett August 9, 1791, in Virginia, then made a home for all in Kentucky. He and an associate, Henry Barnes, began a lucrative milling business which he maintained for years. The Deans, however, were alarmed to see the infusion of slaveowners into Kentucky. As Covenanter Presbyterians, they abhorred the "peculia institution" as intolerable. Daniel and Barnes saved their earnings until 1804 when they purchased a 2,000-acre wilderness tract in the new free state of Ohio. Sadly, their purchase was held up in courts for eight years, while they prepared their growing families to relocate across the Ohio River to Free country!

In September 1812, courts upheld legality of the sale, and Daniel and Barnes pulled together three teams of oxen to move their possessions through what's now Cincinnati to Greene County, Ohio, west of the Xenia settlement. Behind in Kentucky, they left Roger Dean and his new family. Roger died in 1815 and is believed to have been buried near Mount Sterling. Daniel Dean's party ate the first meal on their new land in September 1812 when they dined using a huge, flat boulder as a table. The property since has become part of the Dean Family Cemetery, which is listed as part of the Dean Famil Farm on the National Register of Historic Places. Daniel lived until Jan. 24, 1843; and Jennett lived until Nov. 28, 1841. Both are buried in Dean Cemrtery, near Jamestown, Ohio, with their descendants who, by their deaths, numbered 111.

The Daughters of the American Republic (DAR) has recognized Roger's service as a Patriot with No. AO31042. Roger's grandson Joseph, built a handsome federal home which still stands in 1820; and Roger's great-grandson, Probate Judge Joseph Newton Dean of Xenia, later fought honoraby with the 40th Ohio Volunteer Infantry (1861-64) throughout Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia.

Roger's descendants survive today in Camden, Maine, Knoxville, Tennessee and elsewhere nationwide.