Loren Jessup was ’s father. A Universalist pastor, he lived an austere life so that Doremus could afford to go to college. Loren’s only luxury was the complete illustrated set of Dickens’s novels that he bought himself. (The destroy it while arresting Doremus.) Three years after Doremus’s graduation, Loren Jessup died, leaving the inheritance of about $3,000 that Doremus used to buy part of the . Loren Jessup’s belief in education, financial prudence, and hard work suggests that he taught Doremus the values that he fights for during the dictatorship.