He was educated at the common school in West Rutland and at Franklin Academy in Malone, New York.

He began attendance at Middlebury College but interrupted his studies to enlist in the Union Army for the American Civil War.

In 1868 he received a medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York City.

[2][3] Mead practiced medicine in New York City for two years, and in Rutland from 1870 to 1888, when he was appointed chair of the medical department at the University of Vermont.

[11] He made substantial donations to Middlebury, including the financing of its Mead Memorial Chapel which was constructed in 1916.