Finding aid for the Calvin Pease Papers


Repository: Western Reserve Historical Society
Creator: Pease, Calvin
Title: Calvin Pease Papers
Dates: 1798-1841
Extent: 1.40 linear feet (4 containers)
Abstract: Calvin Pease (1776-1839) 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 (1803-1810), and justice of the Ohio Supreme Court (1816-1830). 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. The collection consists of correspondence; personal papers including land records, tax records, bank notes and accounts; business papers including bills, receipts, agreements, and deeds; field notes and land records; and legal documents from the court.
MS Number MS 0827
Location: closed stacks
Language: The records are in English

Biography of Calvin Pease

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)


Scope and Content

The Calvin Pease Papers, 1798-1841, consist of correspondence; personal papers including land records, tax records, bank notes and accounts; business papers including bills, receipts, agreements, and deeds; field notes and land records; and legal documents from the courts.

This collection will be useful to researchers studying the early history of the Western Reserve, Trumbull County, Ohio, and Warren, Ohio.

Those interested in legal cases involving Simon Perkins, Gideon Granger, and the heirs of Samuel Mather, Jr. will find these papers useful. Those interested in the legal cases involving Quintus F. Atkins, J. R. Giddings, Ashael Adams, Elisha Whiting, and the Oliver Phelps estate will find this collection useful. Also of interest are the records of the Granger holdings in the Western Reserve, a list of the early stockholders of the Western Reserve Bank, and the record of the proceedings of the Ohio-Pennsylvania canal convention.


Statement of Arrangement

The collection is arranged in six series.
Series I: Correspondence is arranged chronologically.
Series II: Personal Papers is arranged in five sub-series. Each sub-series is arranged chronologically.
Sub-series A: Land Records
Sub-series B: Tax Records
Sub-series C: Turnpike and Bank Shares
Sub-series D: Bank Notes
Sub-series E: Financial
Series III: Business Papers is arranged in five sub-series.
Sub-series A: Financial Transactions in Which Pease Served as Agent is arranged chronologically.
Sub-series B: Pease's Service as Clerk of Court is arranged chronologically.
Sub-series C: Pease's Service as Agent for the Postmaster-General is arranged chronologically.
Sub-series D: Contracts and Deeds is arranged chronologically.
Sub-series E: Field Notes and Other Land Records is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
Series IV: Court Records is arranged in eight sub-series.
Sub-series A: Court Dockets is arranged alphabetically by county and then chronologically.
Sub-series B: Supreme Court Documents is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
Sub-series C: Abstracts of Cases have been retained in original order.
Sub-series D: Summonses and Notices is arranged chronologically by type.
Sub-series E: Testimony is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
Sub-series F: Evidence is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
Sub-series G: Summaries of Cases is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
Sub-series H: Specific Court Cases is arranged by subject and then chronologically.
Series V: Ohio-Pennsylvania Canal Convention is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
Series VI: Miscellaneous has been retained in original order.

Restrictions on Access

None.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

Subjects:

Banks and banking -- Ohio -- Cleveland.
Banks and banking -- Ohio -- Warren.
Banks and banking -- Ohio -- Western Reserve.
Court records -- Ohio.
Deeds -- Ohio -- Western Reserve.
Judges -- Ohio -- Correspondence.
Lawyers -- Ohio -- Correspondence.
Pease, Calvin, 1776-1839.
Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal.
Postal service -- Ohio -- Western Reserve.
Real property -- Ohio -- Western Reserve.
Real property tax -- Ohio -- Trumbull County.
Trumbull County (Ohio) -- History -- Sources.
Western Reserve (Ohio) -- History -- Sources.
Western Reserve Bank of Warren, Ohio.

Preferred Citation

[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 827 Calvin Pease Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio

Acquisition Information

Gift of Thomas and Charles P. Kennedy in 1927, and others.

Processing Information

Processed by Diane L. Ewart in 1976.

Detailed Description of The Collection

Series I: Correspondence 1799-1836

Box Folder
1 1 Correspondence 1799-1836

Series II: Personal Papers 1798-1841

Sub-series A: Land Records 1804-1835

Box Folder
1 2 Land Records 1804-1835

Sub-series B: Tax Records 1800-1839

Box Folder
1 3 Tax Records 1800-1839

Sub-series C: Turnpike and Bank Shares 1818-1836

Box Folder
1 4 Turnpike and bank shares 1818-1836

Sub-series D: Bank Notes 1818-1837

Box Folder
1 5 Bank Notes 1818-1837

Sub-series E: Financial 1798-1841

Box Folder
1 6 Miscellaneous financial records 1798-1816
1 7 Miscellaneous financial records (day book) 1816
1 8 Miscellaneous financial records 1816-1822
1 9 Miscellaneous financial records 1823-1841

Series III: Business Papers 1798-1839

Sub-series A: Financial Transactions in Which Pease Served as Agent 1798-1839

Box Folder
1 10 Bills, orders, receipts, notes to collect, and accounts from business transactions 1798-1839

Sub-series B: Pease's Service as Clerk of Courts 1800-1819

Box Folder
1 11 Treasurer's receipts and other court financial records 1800-1803
1 12 Official tax records 1802-1819

Sub-series C: Pease's Service as Agent for the Postmaster-General 1812-1815

Box Folder
2 1 Postal service financial records 1812-1814
2 2 Postal service financial records 1814-1815

Sub-series D: Contracts and Deeds 1801-1835

Box Folder
2 3 Contracts and deeds 1801-1835

Sub-series E: Field Notes and Other Land Records ca. 1800-1836

Box Folder
2 4 Field Notes and Other Land Records, including field notes, statement of lands, statement of lands transferred, statement of lands sold and deeded, and miscellaneous items ca. 1800-1836

Series IV: Court Records 1809-1839 undated

Sub-series A: Court Dockets 1812-1838

Box Folder
2 5 Court Dockets (including Ashtabula, Columbiana, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Portage, Trumbull, and unidentified counties) 1812-1838

Sub-series B: Supreme Court Documents 1827

Box Folder
2 6 Supreme Court Documents (reports of cases, including decisions, trial lists, and evidence) 1827

Sub-series C: Abstracts of Cases undated

Box Folder
2 7 Abstracts of Cases undated

Sub-series D: Summonses and Notices 1813-1839

Box Folder
3 1 Summonses 1814-1838
3 1 Notices 1813-1839

Sub-series E: Testimony 1809-1835 undated

Box Folder
3 2 Testimony without enclosures 1825-1834 undated
3 3 Testimony with enclosures undated
3 3 Depositions 1809-1835

Sub-series F: Evidence undated

Box Folder
3 4 Evidence (including letters, land records, land contracts, financial records, and extracts and copies of material from other cases) undated

Sub-series G: Summaries of Cases undated

Box Folder
3 5 Summaries of Cases (including declarations, sketches of opinions, objections, memoranda, petitions, judgements, statements, and miscellany undated

Sub-series H: Specific Cases 1814-1836

Box Folder
3 6 Granger v. Hart and Mather 1814
3 7 Perkins v. Potter, Castle and Waltrous 1833
3 7 Perkins and Robson v. Fuller 1834-1835
3 8 Atkins v. Giddings 1834
Box Folder
4 1 Adams v. Whiting 1835
4 2 Giddings v. Oliver Phelps et al. 1835-1836

Series V: Ohio-Pennsylvania Canal Convention 1833

Box Folder
4 3 Ohio-Pennsylvania Canal Convention (includes listing of delegates by county, original record of proceedings and resolutions, copy of proceedings, and related materials) 1833

Series VI: Miscellaneous 1833 undated

Box Folder
4 4 Miscellaneous (includes An Essay on Contracts by J. Reeves; a remonstrance against Leonidas L. Hamline's admission to the bar; constitution of the Warren Library Company; list of the stockholders of the Western Reserve Bank; and notes belonging to Royal Pease) 1833 undated