Ohio-Greene County- Dean Family Farm

The Dean Family Farm, listed since 1994 as an historic site on the National Register of Historic Places, has its origins with the immigration of Daniel Dean, a native of Tobermore, Ulster, Ireland, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1784 when he was aged 18, according to Dean fam,ily histories. The National Register and an Ohio Historic Inventory, dated 11 October 1974, list the historic site at 199 N. Ballard Road, Xenia, as having five buildings dating from the 1820s on 157 acres along Caesar's Creek in Greene County, Ohio. Daniel Dean, born Oct. 20, 1776, in Ulster, Ireland was a son of George Roger Dean, which DAR archival records list as a Pennsylvania sergeant and militiaman in the 1770s, along with his elder brothers James and David Dean. A weaver by trade, Daniel Dean lived briefly in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia before meeting and marrying Jannett Steele, a Scots-Irish girl of Augusta County, Virginia. The couple relocated to the vicinity of Mount Sterling, Kentucky, where Dean built a house for them and another for his sister and mother whom he brought from Ireland to Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1790. Daniel and Jannett had the first of their 11 children in Kentucky. But when Ohio became a free state in 1803, Dean, an ardent abolitionist, scouted out the new lands north of the Ohio River with his brother-in-law, Henry Barnes, later Greene County's sheriff and treasurer. Shortly thereafter, Dean bought 2,000 acres on Caesar's Creek near the settlement of Xenia, but he had to spend years litigating to perfect his title. Once the title was secure, Dean, Barnes and their families relocated to Greene County in September 1812. They began a lucrative business in which Dean harvested trees, cut and milled their lumber which Barnes then used to build homes near Jamestown and Xenia, Ohio. Dean, descended from Covenanters, was a Presbyterian Church stalwart. At least 36 of his 111 progeny enlisted and served honorably in the Union Army during the Civil War. Dean, who died at age 77 in 1842, is buried alongside his wife, Jannett, in the Dean Family Cemetery. The farm, still privately owned, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Greene County (Ohio) Public Library archives feature maps --- from 1855, 1874 and 1896 --- that depict the original acreage as divided among Daniel Dean heirs Joseph, William,, John, Levi, D.S. Dean and others. Those lands lie along the Jamestown Turnpike, now U.S. Highway 35.