Brevet Major Charles Elliott Pease (1838-1886) [Section 41 Lot 21]
Civil War Officer who carried out the surrender of Robert E. Lee, one of two men to ride with Gen. Lee and Gen. Grant on the same day during the Civil War
Charles Elliott Pease was born on August 16, 1838, in Albany. He was one of nine children to and Mary Elizabeth Dawes and Richard Henry Pease, a successful businessman, lithographer, and engraver who is credited for his genius marketing tactics that still live on today. In the 1830s he established Pease’s Great Variety Store at 50 Broadway and used his artistic skills during the “holydays” or holidays of Christmas and New Years and credited for inventing what has become the modern Santa Claus. In the 1840s he opened up another shop, The Temple of Fancy. Located at 516 Broadway, it was referred to as an “Emporium of Everything” and used his lithographing expertise to create a special greeting card for Christmas, the first one in the United States.
Charles attended Albany Academy and later Union College. Around age 23 he became interested in the light infantry known as Zouave which practiced in Washington Park. Uniquely Franco-Algerian in style, the uniforms included short open front jackets, baggy pants or sirwal, sashes and oriental style headgear. They frequently tour the country with their performance-like military drills and formations which was patriotic in style.
The Zouave became popular thanks to Albany region native, Elmer Ellsworth. In 1859 he transformed the National Guard of Chicago into the United States Zouave Cadets. An estimated 70,000 attendees came to watch them for an at the U.S. Agricultural Society Fair in Chicago. Charles joined the Albany Zouave Cadets in 1861. However, the Civil War ended the movement around the country with cadets joining the Confederate and Union armies. The Albany Zouave was comprised of Company B. of the 10th NYS Militia Infantry Regiment. Charles was be appointed the First Lieutenant of Company G of the 44th NY Infantry Regiment also known as Ellsworth Avengers. Ellsworth was the first Union fatality trying to remove a Confederate Flag at the Marshall House in Alexandria, Virginia.
Charles was at the Battle of Centreville and the Siege of Yorktown. In 1863, two months before the Battle of Gettysburg, he was promoted to Captain and Assistant Adjutant General, U.S. Volunteers by Brigadier General James Van Alen of Kinderhook and served as his aide-de-camp (confidential aide). At Gettysburg, he joined the Army of the Potomac, and for his “faithful and meritorious service in the field,” he was promoted to Brevet Major by Major General George C. Meade. In February 1865 at the Battle of Hatcher’s Run, he was almost shot, but the bullet killed the horse he rode on.
The morning of April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s third letter, which requested terms of surrender, was received by General Meade. Meade gave the letter to Pease to bring to General Ulysses S. Grant. Upon reading the letter, Grant had Charles ride with him as he rode to the Appomattox Court House, later present at the McLean House where General Lee signed the surrender, ending the Civil War. General Grant instructed Charles to be his military escort for General Lee back to his headquarters as a military courtesy. Upon arrival to his to Confederate headquarters, he was given safe passage through Confederate lines back to General Meade’s headquarters. Charles, along with Colonel Orville Babcock, were the only two men to ride with General Grant and General Lee on the same day during the Civil War. Charles resigned from the army shortly after and returned to Albany.
In 1866 he married Catherine “Kitty” Ganesvoort Trotter and moved to New York City to work for Universal Life Insurance Company. They had one daughter, Estelle Cuyler Pease, though in 1881 she died from chickenpox. Charles died a couple of years later on March 25, 1886, at the age of 48 from diabetes. He is buried in the Pease family plot next to his daughter near South Ridge Road.