Easter Pease ( - July 9, 1893)

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Purchased by Texas Governor Elisha Pease, Easter Pease’s final years are lost to history, but her impact is tied to a community built on perseverance.

Esther, described as around 45 years old when she was sold in 1837, was purchased by Elisha Marshall Pease and his wife, Lucadia, for $550. Governor of Texas in the 1850s and again during Reconstruction, Pease represented the contradictory beliefs and realities of the time. Though they sided with the Union during the Civil War, Pease and his family continued to keep enslaved people on their 365-acre Woodlawn Plantation, just west of downtown Austin.

Census records from 1860 list ten enslaved people living on the property, including a woman around 60. This woman is likely Esther, though records of enslaved people did not list them by name. After the end of slavery in 1865, some of the land that had been the plantation’s housing quarters for enslaved people was given or sold to those who had been enslaved there. One of these people was Charles Griffith, who changed his name to Charles Clark. He encouraged other freed people to build a freedom community, creating Clarksville as a place where Blacks could find refuge from the pressures of white society. Many of the formerly enslaved stayed nearby, working as day laborers and domestic helpers, with some continuing to work for the Pease family.

The 1880 census shows Esther, now listed as "Easter," living within Clarksville on Mulberry Street (modern-day 10th Street). This census is the last known record of her, as the 1890 records were mostly destroyed in a fire.