Pace, Harvey T.

Born: 1805-01-20 Kentucky

Died: 1876-08-13 Jefferson County, Illinois

Flourished: 1839 Jefferson County, Illinois

Pace moved with his family from his native state to Illinois in the 1820s. Pace was a merchant and business man who settled in Mount Vernon, Illinois, running a mercantile establishment in that city from 1832 to his death. In August 1835 Pace, a Democrat, won a special election to represent Jefferson County in the Illinois House of Representatives, finishing the unexpired term of Stinson H. Anderson, who had resigned. In August 1836, Pace won election to the House in his own right, and garnered another term in August 1838. In 1847, he unsuccessfully sought to represent Jefferson County in the Illinois State Constitutional Convention. Pace also served as the president of the first railroad company in Jefferson County. In 1851, he built a school house and in 1854, being an active member in the Christian Church, bought a church specifically for the use of that denomination. In 1860, Pace owned $6,000 in real estate and possessed a personal estate of $19,500. In 1825, Pace married Nancy Bruce, with whom he had six children.

Gravestone, Old Union Cemetery, Mount Vernon, IL; U.S. Census Office, Fifth Census of the United States (1830), Jefferson County, IL, 209; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Jefferson County, IL, 11; John A. Wall, Wall's History of Jefferson County, Illinois (Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen, 1909), 138, 149, 341-42; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 204, 206-207; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 281, 291, 313, 447; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Morgan County, 19 April 1825, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL.