4 Dec. 1820–18 Nov. 1893
He was born in Baltimore, Md., the son of George W. and Mary Roberts Deems. His mother was the daughter of Zachary Roberts, a Methodist minister, and his father, of Dutch ancestry whose ancestral name was De Heems, became a local Methodist preacher; in 1859 he was admitted to the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and was sent to Topsail. Both parents were extremely pious, and the son showed early evidence of a religious bent. After his mother died, he went to live with an aunt who was unmarried in order to study law at Dickinson College, a Methodist institution in Carlisle, Pa. Before his graduation in 1839, his religious bent had turned him to the ministry; afterward he taught school and preached in New York City, where he met his future wife, Annie Disoway, daughter of a prominent hardware merchant there.
Deems joined the New Jersey Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was sent to Asbury Circuit. He soon exchanged his work there for the general agency of the American Bible Society in North Carolina, a state that had always had an appeal for him. In 1840 he began his new job in Caswell and Iredell counties and before long found himself in demand as the "boy preacher"; in 1841 he had his conference membership transferred to North Carolina.
Meanwhile, Deems's interest in education continued. In 1852, while president of Greensboro Female College, he had purchased the Sylva Grove School property in Davidson County, where Thomasville later developed, renamed it Glenn Anna, and supervised it as a preparatory school for Greensboro College under the auspices of the North Carolina Conference. Late in 1858 the citizens of Wilson built a school for boys and girls and presented it to Deems, who organized and supervised it as St. Augustin's Institute, a nondenominational school. He also was instrumental in the conference's move to take over Normal College in Randolph County and served as chairman of its board of trustees; later he was chairman of the board of trustees of Olin High School, another Methodist institution, in Iredell County.
While Deems was at Randolph-Macon, a feud developed between him and William A. Smith, president of the college. Their personal disagreement was to have a tremendous impact on the development of Methodism in North Carolina. Essentially, each man thought that the other was trying to thwart his ambitions, Smith to become a bishop and Deems to become president of Randolph-Macon. For years their conflict rocked the Virginia and North Carolina conferences, with Smith preferring charges of immorality (lying) and slander against Deems in the North Carolina Conference in 1854 and Deems retaliating with like charges against Smith in the Virginia Conference the next year. Both men were exonerated by their own conferences, but opinions became polarized, with most of the North Carolinians taking the part of Deems and most of the Virginians siding with Smith. As a result, the North Carolina Conference established the North Carolina Christian Advocate and withdrew its support from the Richmond Christian Advocate, which had been outspoken in its support of Smith. Also it adopted Braxton Craven's Normal College in Randolph County as its college and gradually withdrew support from Randolph-Macon. Deems, as chairman of the board of trustees, renamed Braxton Craven's school Trinity College. Out of his personal problems had grown a successful movement of independence by the North Carolina Methodists from the overlordship of Virginia.
Deems was a prolific writer and publisher. As early as 1840 he published a book of poems and a biography of Adam Clark. His best known works, Life of Jesus and Scotch Verdict in re Evolution, were both from his later years in New York.
He died and was buried in New York City, leaving two sons and two daughters. The sons, the Reverend Edward M. Deems, Ph.D., a Presbyterian minister, and Francis M. Deems, Ph.D., published a life of their father containing entries from his journal and an autobiography covering his earlier years.