Calvin Pease was born on September 9, 1776 in Suffield, Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. He was one of the many Ohio pioneers of Connecticut birth. Samuel Huntington, George Tod, and Benjamin Tappan had been his neighbors in the East and were his associates in frontier Ohio. He was the eleventh child of Joseph and Mindwell (King) Pease and the descendant of Robert Pease who emigrated from England in 1634 and settled at Salem, Massachussets.
Education
Calvin Pease studied law in the office of his brother-in-law, Gideon Granger.
Career
Calvin Pease was admitted to the bar in 1798. He practised for a short time in New Hartford, but in 1800 he removed to Youngstown, Ohio, and in 1803 he settled permanently in the neighboring town of Warren. He was made clerk of the common-pleas court and served also as the first postmaster of Youngstown. In the bitter contest waged between the advocates of statehood and Gov. Arthur St. Clair, he opposed the governor. Upon the organization of the judiciary of the new state he was appointed presiding judge of one of the three circuits of the court of common pleas. For the next seven years, until March 1810, he traveled over the difficult roads of eastern Ohio dispensing justice according to schedule.
In 1806 Calvin Pease rendered a decision that brought him to the attention of the whole state. The Ohio legislature had passed an act granting jurisdiction in civil suits to the justices of the peace to the limit of fifty dollars. He held this act to be unconstitutional because it impaired the constitutional right of jury trial. Ohio Jeffersonians were fully alive to the threat of legislative supremacy that was involved in this application of John Marshall's formula within their state. Their alarm increased when the state supreme court upheld the decision of Pease in a parallel case. The contest between the legislature and the courts dominated state politics during the years 1808 to 1811.
George Tod of the supreme court and Pease were impeached by the legislature and barely escaped removal from office. When his term expired in 1810 Pease was not reappointed because of legislative opposition. He engaged in private practice and served a term in the state Senate, 1812 - 1813. He also aided the postmaster-general, Gideon Granger, in establishing western postal routes. In 1815 a more conservative Assembly elected him to the state supreme court, where his activity from 1816 to 1830 indicated a mind well-balanced rather than brilliant. He read Sterne and Swift in preference to the legal classics. His written opinions, which are comparatively few, may be found in the first four volumes of Ohio Reports. His conduct on the bench was so stern that young attorneys trembled before him, yet when his robes were laid aside he was a jovial companion, for he could tell a story or sing a ballad as well as any other.
After his retirement from the bench Calvin Pease led a quiet life in Warren. He served one term in the state House of Representatives, 1831 - 1832, where he sponsored bills for the improvement of the treatment of prisoners in the state penitentiary. Calvin Pease died on September 17, 1839.
Achievements
Connections
In June 1804 Calvin Pease was married to Laura Grant Risley, the daughter of Benjamin Risley of Washington, D. C. They had four sons and three daughters.