Leumas Hoyt Pease (1845-1919)

Portrait from the Hardware Dealer's Magazine, 1919.

  For many years a leading citizen in New Britain, Connecticut, Leumas Hoyt Pease was a one-term mayor of that city who devoted over five decades of his life to the Stanley Works, the famed tool manufacturer which later merged with the tool company Black and Decker. A former director, secretary, and treasurer of the Stanley Works, Pease also cultivated a reputation as a leading banker in Hartford County, serving as the vice president and director of three banks in that county. The firstborn son of Julius and Mary (Hotchkiss) Pease, Leumas Hoyt Pease was born on January 20, 1845, in Winsted, Connecticut.

  Removing to New Britain with his family at age two, L. Hoyt Pease (as most sources record him) attended school in that city and graduated from the local high school in 1862. In 1864 he took work at the Stanley Works in New Britain, with which he would be affiliated for the next five decades. Founded in 1843 as Stanley Bolt Manufacturing, the company manufactured door bolts, hinges, and other pieces of hardware from wrought iron, and by 1853 had incorporated as the Stanley Works. The company later designed and built hand planes, saws, chisels, screwdrivers, and other tools, and by the early 20th century had become an industrial powerhouse in New England. In 2010 the Stanley Works merged with Black and Decker and continues operations today, with over 50,000 employees.

   L. Hoyt Pease's early tenure at Stanley Works saw him as an office boy and after several years had advanced to paymaster. He was later placed "in charge of the sales department" for the areas of Boston and Philadelphia and in 1887 was elected as secretary and director of the company. After stepping down from that office, Pease served as company treasurer from 1905 until his death.

  Pease married in New Britain in 1880 to Julia Lillian Sawyer, to whom he was wed until his death. The couple would have three children, including Herbert Hoyt (1881-1967), Maurice Henry (1883-1983), and Dorothy Sawyer (1887-1980). Of these children, Maurice Pease would live to the age of 99, dying one month short of his 100th birthday in August 1983.

Portrait from the Iron Age, May 28, 1896.

  Active in other areas of New Britain business, L. Hoyt Pease was a founder of the Burritt Savings Bank in that city, which had been incorporated in 1889. Pease would serve as a director of that bank and upon the death of bank president Valentine Burt Chamberlain in 1893 succeeded to its presidency. He held that post until his death in 1919, and in addition to that post occupied the office of director of the Mechanic's National Bank and was vice president of the New Britain Trust Company.

  L. Hoyt Pease first entered the political life of New Britain in 1884, when he was elected to the city council. Following a two year term, he successfully ran for city alderman (serving from 1886-87) and was later chairman of the New Britain Republican Town Committee. In 1890 he announced his candidacy for mayor of New Britain and was later elected, serving until 1892. Pease's term was later favorably reviewed in his 1919 obituary, which remarked that he had:

"Clothed the office with an atmosphere of calm, dignity and judicial wisdom that elevated it above the plane of political position. He discharged the duties of the post graciously, always with the interests of New Britain in heart and mind, and his administration was regarded as a model stewardship, worthy to be patterned after by succeeding executives."

  One year after leaving office L. Hoyt Pease was elected to the New Britain school board, where he would serve for twenty-six years. During his lengthy tenure, he chaired that board's finance committee and died in office of heart failure on March 20, 1919, aged 74. He was survived by his wife and children and was later interred at the Fairview Cemetery in New Britain.

Pease's obituary from March 1919.