US Congressman, Jurist. A Democrat, he represented New York's 8th and 12th Districts in the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses, serving from 1851 to 1854. Dean graduated from Yale College in 1841, studied law, and set up practice in Poughkeepsie, New York. He had no political experience prior to his election to the US House in 1850. In July 1854 he resigned from Congress to accept appointment as a justice of the New York Supreme Court, filling the vacancy caused by the death of Seward Barculo. Leaving the bench at the end of 1855, he resumed private law practice in New York City while maintaining a summer residence in Poughkeepsie. As an attorney Dean's most notorious client was Captain Nathaniel Gordon, the only man ever put to death in the United States for international slave-trading. He unsuccessfully appealed the verdict to President Lincoln, arguing that a city prison (The Tombs in New York) could not be used to execute someone convicted of a federal crime; Gordon was hanged in February 1862. Dean died in Poughkeepsie. Originally buried at the Presbyterian Cemetery in his native Pleasant Valley, he was later reinterred at Portland Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, New York.
US Congressman, Jurist. A Democrat, he represented New York's 8th and 12th Districts in the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses, serving from 1851 to 1854. Dean graduated from Yale College in 1841, studied law, and set up practice in Poughkeepsie, New York. He had no political experience prior to his election to the US House in 1850. In July 1854 he resigned from Congress to accept appointment as a justice of the New York Supreme Court, filling the vacancy caused by the death of Seward Barculo. Leaving the bench at the end of 1855, he resumed private law practice in New York City while maintaining a summer residence in Poughkeepsie. As an attorney Dean's most notorious client was Captain Nathaniel Gordon, the only man ever put to death in the United States for international slave-trading. He unsuccessfully appealed the verdict to President Lincoln, arguing that a city prison (The Tombs in New York) could not be used to execute someone convicted of a federal crime; Gordon was hanged in February 1862. Dean died in Poughkeepsie. Originally buried at the Presbyterian Cemetery in his native Pleasant Valley, he was later reinterred at Portland Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, New York.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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