Pease, Calvin, 1776-1839

Lawyer, legislator and judge, of Ohio. He served as judge of the Third Circuit, Court of Common Pleas (1803-10), and justice of the Ohio Supreme Court (1816-30).

Calvin Pease was a lawyer, legislator and judge, of Warren, Trumbull County, Ohio, in the Connecticut Western Reserve. Pease came to the Western Reserve from Connecticut in 1800. He was admitted to the bar and was appointed the first clerk of the court of quarter sessions, a position he held until 1803. He served as judge of the Third Circuit, Court of Common Pleas (1803-10), and justice of the Ohio Supreme Court (1816-30). Pease also served as a tax collector, primarily in Trumbull County, from 1801-1819. He served in the Ohio state legislature from Trumbull County, and also was the official agent for the U.S. postmaster-general in northeastern Ohio. He was a delegate to the canal convention meeting in Warren in 1833. Pease continued the private practice of law until his death at Warren in 1839.

Calvin Pease was born in Canaan, Conn., on August 12, 1813, the fifth child in a family that claimed New England Puritan ancestry. Pease was raised as the middle child in a flock of nine sons and one daughter. His mother was the daughter of Dr. Thomas Huntington, his father, Salmon, was a farmer. In 1826, the family moved to Charlotte, Vt., where Pease worked on his father's farm and attended the common school before enrolling in the Hinesburg Academy in 1832. In the following year, he entered the University of Vermont and under the sway of the religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening, pursued a course in theology. He was a distinguished scholar, standing first in his class at the time of his graduation in 1838. In 1851, Pease was licensed to preach by the Winooski Association of Congregational Ministers and embarked on a ministerial career characterized by an adherence to Calvinistic orthodoxy.

For four years following his graduation from the University of Vermont, Pease acted as principal of an academy in the state capital of Montpelier. While there, he met Martha Howes (1823-1903), and one year after he was elected to the Professorship of Greek and Latin languages at the University of Vermont (1842), the couple were married.

A brilliant philologist, Pease became well known for conscientious linguistic accuracy in his instruction. He was awarded a Doctor of Divinity from Middlebury College in 1855, and the next year he was selected as president of the University of Vermont -- the first alumnus and first University of Vermont professor to rise to the office. Throughout his tenure, Pease emphasized the merits of the classical curriculum, and as a member of the State Board of Education and President of the Vermont Teachers' Association, he took an active role in shaping state educational policy. Amid all this activity, he continued with an active scholarly career, regularly contributing to the Bibliotheca Sacra and publishing a large number of works, including The Import and Value of the Popular Lecturing of the Day (1842) and The Idea of the New England College and its power of culture (1856). He often preached in the college chapel, publishing several of his sermons, and his close interest in the personal welfare of each student made him one of the University's most revered presidents.

Calvin Pease labored to place the University on a firmer financial standing, and he guided it successfully through the monetary crisis of 1857-1858. With the onset of the Civil War, the University entered its most serious economic crisis due to a drastic reduction in enrollment. The roster of graduates shrank from 25 in 1861 to only 3 in 1866. At least 190 University students and alumni served in the Civil War, the greatest number (16) with the 1st Vermont Cavalry. The 1st Vermont fought in 75 battles and skirmishes, and lost 392 men out of 2,304 who passed through its ranks. In 1861, poor health and disputes over the curriculum led Pease to resign the presidency of the University and to accept the pastorship of the First Presbyterian Church of Rochester, N.Y. (1861-63).

A committed abolitionist, his first mention of slavery was in a sermon on April 4, 1850, when he delivered a stinging denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Other recurring themes in his sermons were temperance, the duties of Christian citizens to state and nation, the unconditional authority of the Bible, and the attainment of personal holiness in this life. Pease died of dysentery in Burlington on September 17, 1863.

Calvin Pease (1776-1839), although perhaps not as well known as his brother Seth Pease, one of the surveyors with the Moses Cleaveland expedition, nonetheless pursued a career worthy of interest on its own merits. In one respect, Calvin Pease's life is the more significant of the two for historians of northeast Ohio, for unlike Seth Pease, who eventually returned to Connecticut, Calvin Pease remained in the Western Reserve from the time of his arrival in 1800 until his death in 1839. In the course of these forty years, he became a well-known figure in Ohio's first courtrooms as both a lawyer and judge, eventually sitting on the bench of the Ohio state supreme court.

Calvin Pease was born in Suffield, Connecticut, on September 9, 1776. There is some question as to whether or not he attended college, but it is known that he studied law with Gideon Granger, who was to become postmaster-general of the United States under President Jefferson. Pease's association with Granger, who, incidentally, married Pease's sister, was to last throughout a lifetime. In 1798 Pease was admitted to the Connecticut bar and began practice in New Hartford. In 1800 he migrated west to the Western Reserve and settled in Warren, Ohio. He was admitted to the bar and in the same year was appointed the first clerk of the court of quarter sessions, which position he held until 1803. Now twenty-six years of age, he was elected president-judge of the court of common pleas of the third circuit by the legislature. He continued in this capacity for seven years, resigning in 1810 to resume the practice of law. Pease served as an agent in numerous financial transactions contemporaneously with his various other pursuits throughout his adult life, and collected taxes between 1801 and 1819, primarily in Trumbull County.

In 1812 he began a term in the Ohio legislature as a state senator. Also beginning at this time, he served for three years as the official agent for the postmaster-general, Granger, and oversaw the operations of the postal service in the northeastern Ohio region. In 1816, Pease was elevated to the bench of the Ohio Supreme Court, where he sat for two seven-year terms. At one point, he and another justice, George Tod, had impeachment proceedings unsuccessfully brought against them in the state senate. The charges resulted from the Supreme Court's reversal of a lower court decision, on the grounds that laws enacted by the legislature were invalid when in conflict with the state constitution.

Pease retired from the judiciary in 1830 to again resume private practice. He was elected to the state legislature from Trumbull County in the following year, serving one term and then declining re-election. He was a delegate to the canal convention which met at Warren, Ohio, in November 1833 for the purpose of considering the construction of a canal to connect the already extant Ohio and Pennsylvania Canals, and was appointed to the convention's secretary. Pease continued the private practice of law until his death at Warren on September 17, 1839.

During his forty years in the Western Reserve, Pease had a number of occupations, some of which he pursued simultaneously, and some of which he abandoned after a certain number of years only to resume at a later time. His personal accounts, in which purchases of large quantities of tea, silk, and brandy are recorded, present a picture of needs more than amply satisfied, especially as seen against the rather grim background of widespread scarcity in the Western Reserve in its early years. Though reputed in his lifetime as a great wit and practical joker, his own sense of the dignity and importance of his station was also impressed upon contemporary observers, and it is evident that he lived in a manner commensurate with this sense.

View the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History entry for Seth Pease (brother of Calvin Pease)