Researching Charles Yates’ history to go along with his portrait has aroused my interest in some of the other portraits at the museum, especially the rather dignified man now hanging in my 3^rd floor office. Pearson Church has fascinated much of Crawford County for generations. His legal decisions have had great impact in our history and if you spend just a minute outside the 2^nd District School, you’ll see his name on a blue historical marker, outlining his achievement.

 

Pearson Church graduated from Allegheny College in 1856, studying law with his father, judge Gaylord Church. He was admitted to the bar in 1858 at the age of twenty. He was a husband and father of two as well as a mason and active on the Meadville School Board in the 1870s. It wasn’t until 1877, however, that his career really took off.

 

Church was elected President Judge of the Thirteenth Judicial District in 1877. In 1880, however, his legal abilities were put to the test when Elias Allen of Meadville put current school segregation laws to the test.

 

Elias Allen refused to send his son to the all black school in Meadville where the Crawford County School Board assigned him. The school was farther away from Allen’s home than the local white school and all students were educated in one room rather than by grade as in the white school. Allen sued the school board in Crawford County, claiming the 1854 state law, which stated that areas with 20 or more African American students could place them in a separate school, was unconstitutional, basing his claim on the 14^th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Judge Church agreed, declaring the state school segregation law unconstitutional nearly three-quarters of a century before the famous Brown vs. Board of Education decision in the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Church was known for other cases as well, including the Tidewater Pipeline Case in 1883 which helped to end the Standard Oil Monopoly (in this case for carrying oil). His judicial record is one to be admired even today and this historical marker and his home still stand in Meadville as his legacy…as well as the portrait on my office wall.