Elisha M. Pease was born in Enfield, Connecticut on January 3, 1812.His parents were Lorrain Thompson and Sarah Thompson. He was the fifth and thirteenth governor of Texas. When Elisha was young, he worked at a general store then later worked as a clerk in a post office. He went to school at Westfield Academy which was located in Massachusetts. He eventually moved to Mexican Texas in 1835 and stayed in Mina where he studied law under D.C. Barrett. Pease was secretary of Mina’s committee of Public Safety, and also was a member of the peace faction until problems arose. Soon after, he joined the Texas Independent movement and fought his first battle at Gonzales. Pease was made the secretary of the Provisional government and co-wrote the new Texas …show more content…
He ran for Texas Senate from District 11 in 1849, but lost to John B. Jones, who was taken in on November 5, 1849. Pease contested the election, became winner, and was taken in on November 9, 1849. He married a woman named Lucadia Christiana Niles in 1850, she was also from Connecticut. They had 3 daughters but one of his daughters died when she was a child. Pease first ran for governor in 1851 but dropped from the race two weeks before elections happened. He was elected on his next two elections in 1853 and in 1855. In 1854, he sent some rangers to deal with some problematic attacks on the Mexican Freight Carriers in South Texas, also known as the Cart War. A border war with Mexico in 1855 was narrowly averted across the Rio Grande after mounted participants chased a group of raiding Lipan Apaches. Also, he funded for establishing a hospital for the mentally disabled and proper schools for the blind and deaf. He paid off state debt that would later on be used to finance schools and colleges, and also encouraged railroad construction through state loans devoted to every mile of new track laid. In 1856, a newly discovered river in West Texas was named after him. It was properly named “Pease River” by Surveyor Jacob De Cordova of the Galveston, Henderson, and Houston Railroad Company. In 1856, thanks to Governor Pease, the Texas Governor’s