Nathaniel Dean House Museum

Nathaniel W. Dean was born in Massachusetts in 1818 and moved to Madison in 1842. Dean became a successful businessman as co-owner of what became the town's largest dry goods store, and later worked as a real estate agent and land speculator. Dean became the clerk to the Dane County Board of Supervisors in 1846 and served as a State Assemblyman from 1857 to 1859. His only child, a son, was born in 1849 and died in 1851.

Tax records suggest the Dean House was built between 1857 and 1858, in the rural suburbs of Madison. The 508-acre property was used for dairy cows and to grow wheat. In 1860, Nathaniel Dean was head of an extended-family household in Madison's 4th Ward; this appears to be another house owned by Dean at the time (not the Monona Drive farmhouse). The 42-year-old farmer owned real estate valued at $200,000 and personal property worth $20,000. He shared the house with his wife, Harriett H. (age 30) and her parents and sister: a 61-year-old "gentleman" named James Morrison, Maria A. Morrison (60) and Clara J. Morrison (20). Another family in the dwelling was that of Nathaniel's younger brother, Thaddeus Dean (30, a merchant, with $12,000 personal property), including Isabella Dean (27), Henry Dean (5), and an infant named Charlotte Lewis (6 months). Four servants resided in the Dean house, aged 20 to 33, from Prussia, Norway, Hanover and Saxony. Nathaniel W. Dean was listed on the Madison City Directory from 1866 as part of the firm Dean & Flower.

The Dean house in Madison was removed from the location where Dean and others planned to build the Park Hotel; this may have prompted the temporary move to Dean's farmhouse on Monona Drive, which had been constructed as a rental property. Nathaniel's household was in the Blooming Grove house (on Monona Drive) when enumerated in June 1870 for the census. The 52-year-old farmer's estimates of real and personal property value were unchanged from the 1860 census. Dean and his wife, Harriett H. (41, a Wisconsin native) shared the home with a farm laborer, Stephen Farsit (23, born in Maine), and two servants: Martha Farsit (19) and Alice Calkins (19, born in Illinois). Nathaniel W. Dean worked as a real estate agent in Madison in 1870, with an office at the corner of King and Pinckney streets on the second floor; this commercial building also was known as Dean's Block. After the Dean family moved out of the farmhouse in 1871, it was reportedly leased to tenants.

Nathaniel or Harriett Dean were not located within the 1880 census; Nathaniel's real estate office was still at the corner of King and Pinckney in 1880, but he boarded at 96 Wilson, at his Park Hotel. Nathaniel Dean died in 1880 at age 63 of pneumonia and heart disease, and Harriett moved to San Francisco. Nathaniel's brother, Thaddeus, was not living in the Monona Drive house in 1880, either; Thaddeus had moved to Chicago with his wife, Isabelle, and three daughters by 1880, where the 49-year-old worked as a lumber dealer.

Frank Allis owned the Dean farmhouse from 1881 to 1916. Allis rented the house out; one tenant was Professor William Marshall Sr., who used the property as a summer residence. A Mayor of Madison, Adolph H. Kayser, bought the house in 1916 and sold it to private golf course owners in 1922.

The museum, in the farmhouse leased from the City of Madison by the Historic Blooming Grove Historical Society since 1973, displays artifacts related to local history and offers demonstrations of traditional crafts. The house reflects the lifestyle of a gentleman farmer in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Society has held concerts on the grounds for years to raise funds for renovating the house and its preservation.

Brainerd, A. Madison City Directory and Business Advertiser, for 1871-2. Madison, WI. A. Brainerd, 1870.

Curtis, W.F. & Co. Madison City Directory 1883. Milwaukee, WI. W.F. Curtis & Co, 1883.

Historic Blooming Grove Historical Society. Nathaniel W. Dean Farmhouse, Historic Places. https://www.historicbloominggrove.org/dean-house. Accessed November 8th 2020.

Monona Chamber of Commerce. Historic Dean House, History & Heritage. Accessed November 8th 2020. https://www.travelwisconsin.com/history-heritage/historic-dean-house-198140.

Morrissey & Bunn. Morrissey & Bunn's Madison City Directory. 1880-81. Madison, WI. Morrissey & Bunn, 1880.

Shoptaugh, Terry L. NRHP Nomination of Nathaniel W. Dean House. National Register. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 1980.

Suckow, B. W. Madison City Directory, A City and Business Directory for 1866. Madison, WI. B.W. Suckow, 1866.

U.S. Census. Household of Nathaniel Dean in Madison Ward 4, Wisconsin, Dwelling 535, Family 841. Washington, DC. U.S. Government, 1860.

U.S. Census. Household of Nathaniel Dean in Blooming Grove, Wisconsin, Dwelling 56, Family 56. Washington, DC. U.S. Government, 1870.

U.S. Census. Household of Thaddeus Dean at 537 W. Monroe St. in Chicago Enum. District 109, Illinois, Dwelling 186, Family 204. Washington, DC. U.S. Government, 1880.