Dean, Teresa
Biography
Teresa H. Dean (d. 1935) is sometimes considered the first female war correspondent for stories on the Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellion in China, and insurrections in the Philippines, Mexico and Cuba. Her reputation was founded on columns signed "The Widow" while writing for the Chicago Herald, the Inter Ocean, the Chicago Tribune, and Town Topics and other magazines in New York City. Town Topics published "The Widow" columns for more than twenty years. Dean also wrote White City Chips (1895), Reveries of a Widow (1899), How to be Beautiful: Nature Unmasked (1899), and The Widow in the South: A Series of Letters (1903).
Teresa Dean was born in New York to Henry and Louise ("Eliza") Patten who moved their family to Appleton, Wisconsin during her childhood. She attended Lawrence University and was married to Albert S. Dean from 1875 to 1888; they had at least one son, Warren Dean. She may have been widowed from an earlier marriage to someone by the name of Howard. By 1890 she was writing columns for the Chicago Herald; the paper assigned her to go to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, a few weeks after the massacre at Wounded Knee, to write about the Sioux ghost dance. While living in Chicago, she also wrote for the Inter Ocean and the Chicago Tribune; her columns covering the World's Columbian Exposition were published in 1895 as White City Chips. From 1892-1896 she was married to Dr. W. Lewis Tallman, easily obtaining a divorce after the public scandal of his affair, and receiving legal right to use the name "Dean" again. She was successful in publishing some collections of her columns, but failed to find a publisher for her book on conditions in the Philippines which she observed in 1915-1916. Toward the end of her life she had few financial resources and she was living with her son, Warren Dean, when she died in 1935.