The Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) was the first steam operated public railway in the world when it opened in 27 September 1825. The object of the railway was to reduce the cost of carriage of coal sent from the small coal mine in the Shildon area to Darlington & Stockton and at first it was not thought that there would be any need to provide facilities for passengers. For the first eight years the few passengers were carried in horse-drawn coaches operated by the contractors, it was not until 1833 that the company started to operate passenger trains hauled by locomotives. Synonymous with the S&DR are the names Pease and Stephenson. The Pease family, led by Edward Pease strongly supported the railway and Edward's son, Joseph, prepared the original prospectus and became the company's first treasurer. George Stephenson was appointed engineer in January 1822 to see to the survey and the building of the line, he also supplied the first locomotives which were built be his son, Robert Stephenson. In May 1825 Timothy Hackworth was appointed locomotive foreman and worked with the company for eight years and designed a type of locomotive more suitable for coal traffic, with six-coupled wheels. Most of the branches and extensions to the Stockton and Darlington Railway were built by separate companies, although worked by the S&DR, however most of these companies were taken over by S&DR in 1858. In 1863 the Stockton & Darlington Railway ceased to exist as a separate concern, but until 1876 it was run as the Darlington section of the North Eastern Railway.

Edward Pease was a woollen manufacturer and railway promoter, born at Darlington on 31 May 1767, was the eldest son of Joseph Pease, woollen manufacturer, and his wife, Mary Richardson. Edward was educated at Leeds under Joseph Tatham the elder, and at the age of fifteen was placed in the woollen manufacturing business carried on by his father at Darlington. Pease married, on 30 November 1796, a fellow Quaker, Rachel, daughter of John Whitwell, of Kendal. They had five sons and three daughters. Rachel Pease died at Manchester on 18 October 1833. In 1809 Pease became interested in a scheme for improving navigation on the lower reaches of the River Tees, a project which eventually bore fruit as the Stockton and Darlington Railway, linking collieries in south-west Durham with the London coastal trade in competition with established interests on the Tyne and the Wear. Pease's role as the driving force behind the Stockton and Darlington Railway project was facilitated by his status as a Quaker entrepreneur with extensive familial contacts within the Quaker banking community in Norwich and London. Following the opening of the railway in September 1825, intermarriage within the Quaker ‘cousinhood’, reinforced by intra-family share transfers, resulted in the Pease family's emergence as the leading stockholders in the railway. Thus, despite its status as a publicly quoted company the Stockton and Darlington Railway soon aspired to the standing of a family-run firm. Pease's role as provider of capital is well illustrated in his contribution to the founding of Robert Stephenson & Co. of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1823 as a purpose-built locomotive building establishment. Of the modest initial capital of £4000, £1600 was advanced by Pease, but he also loaned Robert Stephenson £500 towards his own subscription. Pease retired from active business life in 1833. He spent the remaining years of his life, as a notably ‘plain’ Quaker, consumed with guilt about his worldly riches and worrying incessantly about his sons' business speculations. He died of heart failure at his residence, Northgate, Darlington, on 31 July 1858. His relations with George Stephenson and his son Robert remained cordial to the end of his life.

Edward Pease's fifth son, Henry Pease a Quaker railway company promoter, was born at Darlington on 4 May 1807. He also entered with enthusiasm into the railway projects of his father. His principal achievement was the opening in 1861 of the line across Stainmoor, called ‘the backbone of England’, the summit of which was 1374 feet above sea level. It joined at Tebay the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), and was soon extended at its eastern limit to Saltburn-on-Sea. Henry Pease was a director of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and was responsible for the foundation of the seaside resort of Saltburn-by-the-Sea. He purchased the Pierremont house in Darlington in 1845, moving in 1846. The Pease family also rented the Stanhope Castle, Durham. Henry Pease was elected in 1857 as MP for South Durham and held the seat until 1865. In January 1854 Pease was deputed by the meeting for sufferings, held on the 17th of that month, to accompany Joseph Sturge and Robert Charleton as a deputation from the Society of Friends to Russia. On 10 February they were received by the emperor Nicholas, and presented him with a powerful address, urging him to abstain from the then imminent Crimean War. He received them politely, but their efforts were unavailing, and Alexander William Kinglake ridiculed their action in his history of the campaign, Invasion of the Crimea (1863). Pease was MP for South Durham from 1857 to 1865. In 1867 he visited Napoleon III with a deputation from the Peace Society, but their request for permission to hold a peace congress during the Universal Exhibition in Paris was rejected. Henry Pease married, on 25 February 1835, Anna, only daughter of Richard Fell of Uxbridge, who died on 27 October 1839, leaving a son, Henry Fell Pease, MP from 1885 for the Cleveland division of Yorkshire; second, on 19 January 1859, he married Mary, daughter of Samuel Lloyd of Wednesbury, with whom he had three sons and two daughters. Henry Pease was chairman of the first Darlington school board in 1871, in 1867 the first mayor of the town, and president of the Peace Society from 1872. In the early 1860s, when negotiations were in hand for a takeover of the Stockton and Darlington Railway by the North Eastern Railway Company (NER), Pease declared his opposition to the merger, in spite of the generous terms on offer to his family as leading shareholders in the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Following the takeover, however, Pease's sensibilities were overcome by his appointment as vice-chairman of the NER board. It was in that capacity that he presided over the railway jubilee held at Darlington on 27 September 1875, at which eighty British and thirty foreign railways were represented. He was always a prominent member of the Religious Society of Friends. He died at 23 Finsbury Square, London, while attending the yearly meeting, on 30 May 1881, and was buried in the Quaker burial-ground at Darlington on 2 June.

The eldest son of Edward and Rachel Pease, John Pease was a Industrialist Quaker, born at Darlington in 1797. In 1851 he was living at East Mount, Darlington (age 530, Landed and Railway Proprietor, with his wife Sophia (age 49) and daughters Sophia (age 13) and Mary Ann (age 10) plus four servants.

The second son of Edward and Rachel Pease, Joseph Pease was a Quaker railway company promoter and industrialist, was born at Darlington on 22 June 1799. Educated at Tatham's academy, Leeds, and Josiah Forster's academy, London, he subsequently aided his father in the projection of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in 1819 and 1820 by preparing the company's first prospectus. He emerged as an influential voice in the management of the railway in 1828, when he took the lead in projecting an extension of the line from Stockton to the hamlet of Middlesbrough further down the Tees estuary. The effect of this development was twofold: first, to undermine the dominance of Tyne and Wear exporters in the London coastal market for coal; and, second, to lay the foundations for the emergence of Teesside as an outstanding centre for the production of iron. The latter was facilitated by Pease's in numerous railway projections in the north-east of England, all of them designed to open up the heavy mineral wealth of the region. After the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832, Joseph Pease was elected MP for South Durham, and retained the seat until his retirement in 1841. He was the first Quaker member to sit in the House of Commons, and on presenting himself on 8 February 1833 he refused to take the usual oath. A select committee was appointed to inquire into precedents, and on 14 February he was allowed to affirm (Hansard 3, 15, 1833, 387, 639). As a ‘worldly’ Quaker, Joseph Pease was a frequent speaker on matters of social and political reform, always avoiding the use of titles when addressing the house, and retaining his Quaker dress. Joseph Pease married, on 20 March 1826, Emma (d. 1860), daughter of Joseph Gurney of Norwich, and their surviving children comprised five sons and four daughters. In addition to commercial and industrial issues, Joseph Pease devoted himself to philanthropic and educational work, aiding Joseph Lancaster, and acting as president of the Peace Society from 1860. Before 1865 he became totally blind, but, with the aid of his secretary, republished and distributed many Friends' books; and in 1870 he had the Essays on the Principles of Morality of Jonathan Dymond translated into Spanish, for which service the government of Spain conferred on him (2 January 1872) the grand cross of Charles III. Joseph Pease died on 8 February 1872 at his Darlington home, Southend, from heart disease. He was buried in the Quaker burial-ground in Darlington on 10 February. At the time of his death Pease's industrial concerns employed nearly ten thousand men in collieries, quarries, and ironstone mines. In addition he owned and directed woollen manufactories and was a leading shareholder in Robert Stephenson & Co., of Newcastle upon Tyne, numerous Teesside ironmaking concerns, and in the Middlesbrough estate.

Pease, Sir Joseph Whitwell, first baronet (1828–1903), industrialist and banker, born at Darlington on 23 June 1828, was the elder son of Joseph Pease (1799–1872), railway company promoter and industrialist and his wife, Emma (d. 1860), daughter of Joseph Gurney of Norwich. Edward Pease was his grandfather. In January 1839 he went to the Friends' school, York, under John Ford. Entering the Pease banking partnership at Darlington in 1845, he became largely engaged in the projection of railway enterprise and in the management of the woollen mills, collieries, and iron trade with which the firm was associated. He was soon either director or chairman of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the Owners of the Middlesbrough Estate Ltd, Robert Stephenson & Co. Ltd, Pease & Partners Ltd, and J. and J. W. Pease, bankers. In 1894 he was elected chairman of the North Eastern Railway, after serving as deputy chairman for many years. He also farmed extensively, having purchased a 3000 acre estate at Hutton Lowcross in the North Riding of Yorkshire in 1867. He read a paper, entitled ‘The meat supply of Great Britain’, at the South Durham and North Yorkshire chamber of agriculture, on 26 January 1878. He married in 1854 Mary, daughter of Alfred Fox of Falmouth. She died on 3 August 1892. They had two sons and six daughters. In 1865 Pease was returned as Liberal MP for South Durham, which he represented for twenty years. After the Redistribution Act of 1885 he sat for the Barnard Castle division of Durham county, until his death. He strongly supported Gladstone on all questions, including Irish home rule, and rendered useful service to the House of Commons in matters of trade, particularly in regard to the coal and iron industries of the north of England. He was president of the Peace Society and of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Traffic, and a champion of both interests in parliament. On 22 June 1881 he moved the second reading of a bill to abolish capital punishment, and his speech was separately printed. In 1882 Gladstone created him a baronet (18 May). No Quaker had previously accepted such a distinction, although Sir John Rodes (1693–1743) inherited one. In 1886 Pease unsuccessfully attempted to persuade Gladstone to defer his first government of Ireland act. During the course of 1902 the family banking partnership, J. and J. W. Pease, became insolvent, the product in large measure of a court settlement against Pease in the matter of the administration of the estate of his niece (the countess of Portsmouth), for which he had acted as trustee for many years. Drained of capital, and dependent on secured and unsecured loans to meet the dividend payments of leading industrial concerns, including the Consett Iron Company, Pease & Partners Ltd, and the North Eastern Railway, the bank was absorbed by Barclay & Co. on disadvantageous terms. Although Pease and his sons were saved from bankruptcy proceedings by the receipt of generous financial support from business associates both in London and in the north-east of England, the settlement with Barclay & Co. entailed the forfeiture of the bulk of their estates. Pease died at Kerris Vean, his Falmouth home, of heart failure, on 23 June 1903, his seventy-fifth birthday, and was buried at Darlington.

Jonathan Backhouse, a banker and financier, was born in Darlington, Co. Durham, the eldest son of Jonathan Backhouse (1747–1826), banker, and his wife, Ann (d. 1826), the second daughter of Edward Pease of Darlington. Jonathan senior was the eldest of three sons of James Backhouse of Westmorland, a yarn and wool dealer, who had moved to Darlington during the 1750s to establish a flax-dressing and linen-manufacturing business. This was the precursor to the foundation, in 1774, of J. and J. Backhouse banking, a partnership shared by James, with his son Jonathan and later also with his nephew James junior. The family had earlier indicated its interest in wider commercial affairs by taking on the local agency of the Royal Exchange Assurance in 1759. As private bankers, the Backhouses were not untypical of numerous entrepreneurs in the eighteenth-century economy who combined manufacturing ventures with the financing of trade generally. In 1798, following the death of James senior, the title of the bank was changed to Jonathan Backhouse & Co. It was in this form that it became involved in the financing and projection of the pioneering Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first public railway to be empowered to use steam locomotives. During the first three decades of the nineteenth century Backhouse proved to be the dominant partner in the bank, and he presided over a process of expansion which was to consolidate its position in the commercial infrastructure of co. Durham. In 1805 a branch was opened at Durham and in the following year at Sunderland. In the mid-1820s the network was extended to Newcastle upon Tyne, South Shields, and Stockton-on-Tees. In conformity with the evolution of the banking system in the country as a whole at this time, the north-east of England was afflicted periodically by phases of instability in response to the overextension of credit. Local banking crises occurred in the late 1790s, in 1803, 1815, 1819, 1823, and 1825. Jonathan Backhouse & Co. weathered all of these vicissitudes without difficulty. Backhouse resigned as treasurer to the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1833 in order to embark upon full-time ministry on behalf of the Society of Friends. He retained his partnership in the family bank, but bequeathed his authority to his son, Edmund (1824–1880). Jonathan Backhouse died at Darlington on 7 October 1842.

Early in the 19th century there were three local pits in operation, owned by the Stobart family, these being the Mary Ann Pit, the Jane Pit and the George Pit. The Mary Ann is said to be the oldest of the three collieries. At that time transportation of coal was expensive and inefficient and in 1821 an act of parliament was authorised to begin construction of what was to become the World’s First Passenger Railway: The Darlington/Stockton Railway. In 1825 the Jane Pit was used as the terminus for the line which started at Witton Park Colliery, followed the inclines at Etherley and Brusstleton, continued via Shildon and Darlington and ended on the banks of the River Tees at Stockton. Henry Stobart, owner and head of the local mining company, made his home in the village of Etherley and the majority of the houses in the village were reserved for officials, clerical staff and others working at the residence of Mr. Stobart and were distinctively better in design and quality. Mr. Stobart eventually became known as the squire of the neighbourhood. The George Pit, latterly known as Old Etherley Colliery, closed in 1917 and the closure of Jane Pit in April 1925 caused the loss of 255 jobs and was one of many economic disasters to befall the area. Evidence of the importance of the Stobart family, the principal landowners and colliery owners at the time, can be found in the church in the form of a stained glass window placed in memory of John Henry Stobart and the church clock presented in memory of William Culley Stobart.