A. M. Dean, an attorney, had spent his life since boyhood in Southern Kansas or in Northern Oklahoma.
He was born at West Point, Nebraska, December 7, 1875. His family history goes back to Pennsylvania, where his grandfather, A. M. Dean, was born about 1821 and where the Deans settled when they came from England. A. M. Dean, the grandfather, grew up in Ohio, afterwards moved to Wisconsin, was a pioneer there and also in Nebraska, and finally located in Arkansas City. He was a farmer until he retired, and his death occurred in Arkansas City in 1893. Politically he was a republican. He married Miss Martha Skinner, a native of Ohio, who died at Chandler, Oklahoma, several years after the death of her husband. Their children were: Merritt, who went into the Union army and died of disease while in service; James, also a veteran of the Civil war, became a farmer and died at Firth, Nebraska; A. W. Dean; Carl W., a retired resident at Pasadena, California; and Charles H., a grain dealer living at Cyril, Oklahoma.
A. W. Dean was born at Medina, Ohio, in 1847, and spent his early life in Wisconsin. In 1872 he moved out to the frontier of Nebraska near West Point, was one of the pioneers there, from Nebraska came to Arkansas City, Kansas, in 1885. With the opening of the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma in 1893 he became a resident of that territory, settling in Kay County and living there until 1912, when he retired and had since lived in California at North Fork, inland from Fresno. In politics he at one time was aligned with the greenbackers, but subsequently became a democrat. A. W. Dean married Harriet E. Ellis, who was born in Posey County, Indiana, in 1847. Their children were: Mabel, wife of H. A. Smith, an attorney at Perry, Oklahoma; Nellie M., who is unmarried and is an instructor in the State University of Nebraska at Lincoln; A. M. Dean; Ellis F., who is an official in the Topeka Transfer and Storage Company at Topeka; Mary E., wife of James P. Wilkinson, connected with the Santa Fe offices at Wichita.
A. M. Dean was ten years of age when his father came to Kansas, and he completed his education in the public schools of Arkansas City. He left school at the age of fifteen, went on the farm and did practical farm work for five years. Having an ambition for the law, he pursued his readings with J. Mack Love, and was admitted to the bar in 1898. He had practiced law nearly twenty years and had made a specialty of commercial law. He had been counsel for the Ranney-Davis Mercantile Company for ten years.
Mr. Dean, who is unmarried, is a democrat.