Biography extracted from History of Sauk County, Wisconsin Chicago: Western Historical Company, published 1880.

Greenfield:

Rev. John Bean (deceased), came to Wisconsin in 1845, and commenced the work of an itinerant missionary near Milwaukee; in 1853, he came to Sauk Co. and entered 80 acres in Fairfield; he still held his place in the Methodist Conference, laboring at West Bend, Big Foot Prairie, East Troy, Watertown, Albion, Portage City, Reedsburg, Union, Mauston, Necedah, Black River Falls, Russell’s Corners, Beetown, Jamestown, Washborn, Fennimore, Juda, Monticello and Middleton, until he became so crippled with rheumatism that he could not attend to his pulpit and pastoral duties, when he came to Fairfield to live in 1870; in 1876, he removed to his place in Greenfield, where he died of apoplexy, May 1, 1880. Mr. Bean was a son of David and Sally Bean, of Strafford, Vt., where he was born in 1816; was educated in the academy at Newbury; was licensed as exhorter in the Methodist Church at the age of 18, and was married at 22 to Miss Caroline Hayes, who, with very marked fidelity and rare helpfulness, shared his toils and cares through all his changeful life; Mr. Bean was an excellent revival preacher and a shrewd businessman, which made him successful in building up his churches, and helped him in laying by a competency for old age.

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