Professor John Deane was born on August 2, 1869, in Westmoreland, New York, the son of the Reverend James and Annie Bosworth Deane. His father was a Congregational minister, which probably decided John Pitt Deane’s future. He was a graduate of Cornell University and taught Classics in a Brooklyn, New York, Latin school until 1895, after which he enrolled in the Yale Divinity School from which he graduated in 1898.

Upon being ordained into the ministry in 1901, he was assigned to the Ashland, Wisconsin, Congregational Church, where he remained until 1907 when he received a call from Beloit Academy to be the school’s principal and instructor in the Classics. He was the last principal of the Academy and was installed as professor of Biblical Literature by Beloit College in 1919, where he was given the responsibility of Dean of Freshman for a period of three years.

During 1915 Professor Deane received his M.A. degree from the University of Chicago and two years later at the outbreak of World War 1, he volunteered as YMCA secretary, serving in both France and Italy with the American armed services. At the conclusion of the war he returned to Beloit College and resumed his teaching. During his sabbaticals he toured the Near East in 1924-1925, Russia in 1929 and both England and Scotland in 1936. Deane’s community interests were confined to the YMCA, the Beloit Historical Society and as church school superintendent in the First Congregational Church. He died in 1950.