Mary Stewart/Gilbert Dean

Alvan Stewart had three know children, Jane "Jeannie" , Alvan Jr and Mary. I'm having a hard time trying to trace Alvan Jr. but Jane and  Mary Stewart, our cousins, has proved to be easier :) 

Mary marries Gilbert Dean in 1855 after the death of his first wife in 1850. Mary is Gilbert Dean's second wife.  His first wife is Amelia Smith, yes the Smith family follows us everywhere. :) Amelia Smith is the daughter of Seabury Smith and Harriett Lockwood of Sharon,Litchfield,CT.  This family is the the direct descendant of Rev. Cotton Mather Smith.  Does this Smith family intertwine with our Smith family in CT... only time will tell.

Gilbert Dean has a certain noterarity of his own.  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. 

The Gordon case was tried twice.  The first case resulted in a hung jury.  In doing some research on the case, I discovered that Gordon was a pirate by trade.  Most of his activity prior to the slave trading was confined off the coast of the United States. What brought this case to the attention of the public was the fact that of the 897 Africans loaded on the ship Erie, most were children. The Erie was captured 50 miles from the African port by the USS Mohican on August 7, 1860.

Dean died in Poughkeepsie in 1870. Originally buried at the Presbyterian Cemetery in his native Pleasant Valley, he was later reinterred at Portland Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, New York.

But is really our cousin Mary and her three sons that are important to us.....

Gilbert Dean