[1] In 1888, he graduated from Michigan State Agricultural College where, for the next two years, he taught botany.
Dewey was hired as an assistant botanist of the United States Department of Agriculture in 1890.
[2] In 1911, he was the U.S. representative to the International Fibre Congress, held in Surabaya on Java island, in the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia).
[citation needed] His publications comprised bulletins of the United States Department of Agriculture, on:[3] He wrote about growing exotically named varieties of hemp on USDA research land in Virginia known as the Arlington Experimental Farm, site of the present day Pentagon.
Dewey began keeping personal diaries in 1896 and wrote in them nearly daily until his death in 1944.