Hon. Harvey T. Pace - Death of an Old and Well Know Citizen

While seated at the breakfast table on Sunday morning last, Harvey T. Pace was suddenly stricken with paralysis, and so malignant was the attack that in less than two hours he breathed his last. Mr. Pace had been sick and feeble for several weeks, but during the past ten or fifteen days had revived and grown apparently better at such a rapid rate that his relatives were feeling greatly encouraged, and were enjoying high hopes that he would live a long time yet. Their astonishment at his sudden death can better be imagined than described.

Mr. Pace was buried on Tuesday, his remains being followed to the grave by perhaps the largest concourse of citizens, relatives and friends that ever attended a funeral in Mt. Vernon. His remains were laid along side of the estimable wife that he lost in October last - a companion whose death he had mourned with the most intense feeling of sorrow from the day of her decease to the moment that he breathed the last breath of mortality.

Mr. Pace, during his lifetime, filled several places of trust and honor, having been in 1846 elected to the legislature, and re-elected for two terms thereafter. While in the legislature, such men as Douglas, Lincoln, Linder, and others of Illinois' great men also held seats there, and he was personally acquainted with all of them. He was always true to the principles of his constituents, and never faltered in casting votes that he believed would subserve the interests of the people of the State. He was always a firm and consistent democrat, never allowing himself to be led astray from those straight paths that were followed with so much zeal and faithfulness by Jefferson and Jackson.

He was born in the state of Kentucky in the year 1805, and came to Jefferson county in 1822.

He almost immediately engaged in business here, and for many years was the only merchant of any pretensions in the scope of country now embraced in Jefferson county, including a large portion of Hamilton, Wayne, Marion, Washington, and Franklin. As a merchant he was prompt, energetic, honorable and straight in all his dealings with his customers, and soon built up a very lucrative and heavy trade. In this trade, he amassed a handsome competency, which he now leaves to his grown up children, four in number.

Of late years he did not pay much attention to merchandising, although he always kept up a complete stock of goods at the old stand.

Personally Mr. Pace bore many remarkable traits that marked him as a man of more than ordinary intelligence. He was a great reader, and his mind was a store-house of political and incidental history.

As a father and husband, he was kind and generous and as a citizen, Mt. Vernon never possessed one more exemplary, or more honorable or worthy. He was a gentleman of the old school, belonging to a class who, unfortunately, are fast passing away - a class of gentlemen whose memories will be cherished in after years as pleasant dreams are loved for their refining and blessed effect upon the mind.

Source: Mt. Vernon News
Date: August 16, 1876
Submitted by Mary Jane Ohms - July 5, 2001