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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, County Londonderry, Ireland, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1784 when he was aged 18, according to Dean family histories. Daniel was a son of George Roger Dean, who fought in the Colonial line, and Mary Campbell who was reared with her sister by the Duke of Argyl at Inveraray Scotland, the clan Campbells' ancestral home.
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 (0.6 km²) along Caesar's Creek in Greene County, Ohio. Daniel Dean, born Oct. 20, 1766 in Ireland was a son of George Roger Dean, whom 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 Jennet "Jenny" Steele, a Scots-Irish girl of Steele's Tavern in Augusta County, Virginia. The couple relocated to the vicinity of Mount Sterling, Kentucky, where Dean built a mill, a house for the couple and another for his sister and mother whom he brought from Ireland to Kentucky via Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1790. Daniel and Jennet had the first of their 11 children while 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 to become Greene County's wartime sheriff and treasurer. Dean, shortly thereafter, bought 2,000 acres (8.1 km²) on Caesar's Creek near the settlement of Xenia, but he spent several years litigating to perfect his title. Once the title was secure, Dean, Barnes and their families relocated via Fort Washington (later Cincinnati) to Greene County in September 1812. They began a lucrative business in which Dean harvested, cut and milled timber for lumber which Barnes used to build homes in and near Xenia, Ohio.
Dean, descended from Covenanter Presbyterians, was a church stalwart. At least 36 of his 111 progeny enlisted and served honorably in the Union Army during the Civil War. Dean, who died in 1842 at age 77, is buried alongside his wife, Jennet, 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's heirs Joseph, William,, John, Levi, D. S. Dean and others. Those lands lie along the Jamestown Turnpike, now Ohio State Highway 35.
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