1858, July 31st

Edward Pease was descended from a Yorkshire family, at one time settled near the town of Barnsley, a branch of which joined the Society of Friends, and thus became separated from the old stock. Edward Pease was born at Darlington, May 31, 1765. He was a most energetic and public spirited man, and one to whom his native town owes much of its present position in the railway and industrial world. The Pease family had long been connected with the wool trade, which, under his business-like aptitude and attentiveness, had become a most prosperous undertaking. Before the Stockton and Darlington Railway project engaged his attention, he had already achieved fame and fortune, being then nearly sixty years of age. It is, however, in connection with that enterprise that Edward Pease will be best remembered, for in nothing was he foresight, native shrewdness, and courageous tenacity of purpose more strongly displayed than in the projection of the Stockton and Darlington railway. Having faith in its ultimate success, he went about the project with characteristic energy and promptitude, and, backed by his Quaker friends, successfully accomplished what appeared to many to be a desperate and foolish undertaking, but one which eventually more than fulfilled the expectations of its promoters.

"Even in his eighty-eighth year he still possessed the mental vigour of a man in his prime. Hale and hearty, full of interesting reminiscences of the past, he yet entered with interest into the life of the present, and displayed a warm sympathy for all current projects calculated to render the lives of men happier. Still sound in health, his eye had not lost its brilliancy nor his cheeks its colour ; and there was an elasticity in his step that younger men might have envied. His vigorous judgement and strength of purpose, which made him, when once convinced, stand by the railway project upon which he had set his heart, when all the world called him schemer and fool, had not departed from him, and he could now afford to crack a lively joke at the prejudiced blindness of those who long made him the subject of their ridicule." His long and useful life was brought to a close on the 31st July, 1858. When he came to be interred in the little cemetery of the Friends at Darlington, a very large assembly attended , to mark their respect to the "father of railways," as they loved to call him.

Source: History, Topography, and Directory of the County Palatine of Durham by Francis Whellan. Second edition published in 1894.