"An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties."  Interstate
Publishing Company, 1906.  p. 776.
 
GEORGE DEAN

     a shipwright by trade, for many years postmaster at Samish, one of the
early comers to Samish island, has made a success in business, though at times
he has had trying experiences. He was born in Banffshire, Scotland, January 15,
1850. the fourth of the ten children of William and Catherine (Horn) Dean, both
of whom lived and died in the old country. When a lad of fourteen years George
Dean left home to serve a five years apprenticeship to the trade of
shipwrighting. On receiving his papers he worked at Aberdeen, Dundee and
Glasgow, Scotland, and Newcastle, England, each time changing location on
account of labor troubles. In 1875 he came to the United States, landing in New
York, and started on a tour of the country, which was finished Seattle in the
fall of 1875, Mr. Dean arriving there on the first iron steamer which entered
that port. The city boasted of but two hotels then, the Occidental and the New
England.
     After looking over Seattle for two weeks, Mr. Dean came to Samish, where a
brother was keeping store and postoffice at the steamboat landing. Samish was
then the chief distributing point for the whole valley back as far as Warner's
prairie, but there was but one white family on the Samish flats. Mail came by
the steamer "J. B. Libby" once a week and the steamer "Dispatch" from Port
Townsend also stopped once in seven days. It was not an unusual sight to see a
band of one hundred Samish Indians about the store and postoffice, and Mr. Dean
soon became able to converse with them. Much of the water front around Edison
had been taken up, but no one lived there until about 1880, when settlement
began in earnest. Soon after his arrival Mr. Dean built a saw-mill, using wind
as motive power, and with lumber turned out from that mill he built a schooner
which he sailed for nine years; then he built the steamer "Mary Purley" and
operated that for three and a half years, eventually selling out. On the death
of his brother Mr. Dean took charge of the property. A difficulty arose with the
shipowners and none would stop at his wharf or warehouse except the independent
boats, but he did business with these for two years. He continued to be
postmaster until 1897, when he went to Unalaska to build river boats, in company
with J. F. T. Mitchell of Seattle, for the Boston & Alaska Trading Company. On
his return Mr. Dean worked out the details of a new fishing device which
combines the qualities of the purse seine with those of the pile trap, and is
adapted for work in either deep or shallow water. The device has been patented,
and the authorities consider it the most valuable thing of the kind developed in
this state for a decade and a half. Mr. Dean has never married.  In politics he
is a Republican. He is a man of energy, wide awake, thorough in business and
possessing traits of personal character that win for him the confidence of his
associates and the respect of all whom he meets.

     
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Submitted to the Washington Biographies Project in November 2007 by Diana Smith.
Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned
above.