An Ordinary Saint
The Life and Contributions of Joseph Henry Dean
by Davis Bitton

Joseph Henry Dean did not live a life without troubles, but he touched a lot of bases.  He was a foot soldier of the restoration.  There have always been many such members who never quite make it into the limelight.

Born in England, he emigrated with his parents and settled in Utah.  In 1876 we find him working as a stonecutter on the Salt Lake Temple.  At age 21, he married.  After teaching school for a year he was called, with his wife Sally, to serve a mission in the Sandwich Islands.  Returning to Utah, he attended the People’s Party convention and was elected Salt Lake City alderman.  He was also a justice of the peace.

In 1885, when he married a plural wife, Florence Ridges, he was convicted of unlawful cohabitation and served a term in the territorial penitentiary.  After his release, he served another mission in Hawaii, taking Florence with him.  This turned out to be a mission with great consequences, for the Deans were called to go to Samoa and open up the missionary work there.

Returning to Utah, he wrote tracts and articles for Church periodicals.  He traveled to California.  He visited Brigham Young Academy.  True to his long-standing affection, he paid a visit to the Hawaiian saints at Iosepa.

But how could he make a living?  Dean attended the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple in 1893 and then was employed as custodian.  When a special evening meeting for the temple workers was convened, Dean attended.  Thanks to his record that we have the following precious entry:

            "I never felt a more heavenly influence in my life, especially the last hour.  We did not get away until 12:30.  The last hour our hearts were so melted that the most of us were sobbing and weeping for joy.  Pres. Geo. Q. Cannon began to speak at 11:30.  He was saying or began to say that he knew that Jesus was the Christ, for he had seen his face and heard his voice.  His emotions here overpowered him, and he had to stand and say nothing for a few moments until he could control himself.  He also testified that he knew that God lived for he had seen his face and heard his voice."

Sacred experiences in holy places are usually not reported to the public.  In writing this entry in his journal, Dean was not calling a press conference.  But for himself, for his family, and for some of the rest of us many years later he preserved a moment of great spiritual intensity.

By the late 1890s Dean had homes in Fruitland, New Mexico, and Mancos, Colorado.  He ran a store for a time.  Then he hit the road as a traveling salesman from New Mexico and Colorado through Utah and up into Idaho.  His specialty was Indian blankets, but he also sold books, postcards, and life insurance.  Since we know he had a great interest in music, I like to picture him as our Latter-day Saint version of Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.

Eventually he settled in Shelley, Idaho, leasing a hotel there.  When his son Harry was called to serve a mission in Samoa, Joseph, the father, was called on a third mission there.  The father-son team  translated many hymns from English into Samoan and supervised the publication of a Samoan hymn book.  Returning to Idaho, Joseph  took a job with the sugar company.

In the church, in addition to serving as a high councilman,  he was a ward chorister and a stake chorister.  His choirs performed in sacrament meetings and in quarterly stake conferences.  For Christmas and Easter they performed cantatas.  One of his choirs won first prize at a competition held in Rexburg.  He composed hymns.  You may recognize the hymn entitled “Before Thee, Lord, I Bow My Head.”

Joseph Henry Dean is a good reminder that choral singing in the church was not limited to the Tabernacle Choir.  Excellent choirs were organized in wards from Canada to Mexico.

Harry Dean, the son who had served in the Samoan Mission with his father, decided to make a career in music.  After his studies, he taught music at Gila College, Ricks College, and for thirty years at Snow College.

In 1929 Joseph Dean listened to the first radio broadcast of the Tabernacle Choir.  During the 1930s, times were especially tough.  At age 78, he took a job as a night watchman.  But there was also a sweetness to his final years.  He was ordained a patriarch.  A special testimonial meeting was held in his honor.  He wrote in his diary, “I have lots of friends and no enemies.”

It was right after the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple in 1893 that Joseph Dean became a member of the Tabernacle Choir, continuing for three or more years.  How he enjoyed it!  It provided a foundation of musicianship and a living example of how things should sound that undergirded his own composition and choir directing for many years.

You may be interested in an excursion the Tabernacle Choir took to Brigham City in 1893.  On the third day, they met in the tabernacle, and Dean was called upon to speak.  This is what he said:

"My brethren and sisters, I am very glad that my turn has come, for ever since I knew I had to speak a very serious state of thing has happened to me, that is an almost total suspension of the process of digestion.  I feel as though I would like to thank the people of Brigham, but when I try to thank those who have been kind to me, a peculiar lump has a crazy way of rising up in my throat and choking me.

"I was never so killed with kindness in my life.  At the place where I am stopping they have fed us on strawberries and cream, and I have eaten so many that last night I had a strawberry nightmare.  I thought a great red strawberry came into the bedroom.  It was so large it had to draw in its sides to get through the door.  It hopped around the bed, and declared with two exceptions I had destroyed more strawberries than any other person on the excursion.  The two exceptions were Bishop Romney and Sister McDonald."

Those in the audience, including the other members of the choir, got a huge kick out of that story.  Over all the others could be heard the laughter of President Joseph F. Smith.

Joseph Henry Dean–a man of dedication and prayer, a man who carried the gospel across the sea, a hard-working man, a man who added music to the lives of many people.  His life exemplifies the words of the hymn “Each Life That Touches Ours for Good.”