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Proving the family of Joseph Nicholas Pace
by Roy Johnson

Sources used:

1. Census records, 1860 St. Clair County and 1880 Vernon County.
2. Obituary of Ella Mae Pace Rapp (d. 23 Aug 1958, Mt. Vernon, MO). My photocopy of the obituary does not indicate what newspaper it was in. It listed six siblings grouping males and females, not in birth order.
3. A set of notes by Jewel Ivan Pace, granddaughter of Joseph Nicholas Pace. These notes were apparently written when she was a very young girl, as she was born in 1902, but the notes show no dates later than 1910.  For example, the birth (1873) and marriage(1901) of Joseph Carol Pace are shown, but not his death in 1916.  The death of Joseph Nicholas Pace in 1910 is the last date shown. Perhaps she made the notes at age 12 or 13. The notes were ink blotted and in places hard to read but with the aid of a good glass, they were legible.  This was the "Rosetta stone" of the project. A photocopy of the notes was sent to me by another J.N. Pace descendent.

When I began research on the family of my great-grandfather, there were several enigmas:

1. An elusive "Aunt Franny" or "Aunt Fannie" who "married a Lasiter and moved to Oregon", subject of stories by my mother and other relatives.  An elderly relative, Lela Frances Pace, stated firmly that she was named after her "Aunt Franny" or Frances. No such person was shown in the census records.
2. A Martha Pace in the 1880 Vernon County Census and a "Martha S. Pace" in Jewel Ivan's notes  (as interpreted by the second cousin who sent them) with no further records after the 1880 census.
3. A "Robert H. Pace" in Jewel Ivan's notes, with a birth date deciphered by other family members as 1838.  They theorized he was a brother to Joseph Nicholas (b.1836), but census records showed no such brother.
4. A Lee Pace shown in 1880 census records but vanishing thereafter.
5. A Richard (Dick) Pace in the Ella Mae Pace Rapp obituary but not shown in census records; oral history of "Dick Pace, who was killed by a stallion as a young man".

I was able to demonstrate the following and clear up these problems:

1. By cross-comparing how Jewel Ivan formed her letters in different words, I was able to prove that "Martha S. Pace" was actually Martha F. Pace, as the capital F Jewel used in other places in the document (for example, in the name of Lela Frances Pace) was exactly the same as the the letter that looked like an "S" in Martha S. Pace.  By cross-comparing sources, it became obvious that Martha F. Pace was Martha Frances, the elusive "Aunt Franny"
2. I showed that Jewel Ivan made her 5's in a funny way so that they looked like 3's. Again I did this by comparing the 3 in the supposed 1838 date to numbers as she made them in known dates. Robert H. Pace was born in 1858, not 1838, which was further proved by 1860 census records of St. Clair County listing Joseph Nicholas Pace with a son, Robert H. Pace, age 1. I have not found the JNPace family in the 1870 census records and Robert died before the 1880 census, explaining his absence from further records.
3. By cross-comparing, Lee Pace in the 1880 Vernon County Census, age 17, was the same as "R. L. Pace, born ?? the 18, 1868" in Jewel Ivan's notes, and had to be the same as Richard Pace in Ella Mae Pace Rapp's obituary, by process of elimination -- so he was Richard Lee Pace.

Here is the chart that I prepared as evidence:

 We can guess some things about the life of Joseph Nicholas Pace and his family from the records.  To fully understand, you have to be aware of some Missouri history.  We had our on special Civil War, with two governors and two legislatures. The Yankee side finally won out, but there was much bitterness and a lot of recrimination.  Western Missouri was the heaviest slave owning territory next to the river valleys, and the devastation there was terrible. After the war, there were many who were seeking revenge on the Confederate sympathizers.  Many counties on the Kansas border were virtually depopulated.  I believe this explains the movements of Joseph Nicholas Pace and his family in these years.

Joseph Nicholas Pace married Ann Eliza Jackson on 4 Feb 1858 (Source: The History of St. Clair County Missouri Families, Vol. 1, 1995, St. Clair County Historical Society), and was living there with one son, Robert H. Pace, according to 1860 census records.  His father died in 1865 and his mother became executrix of the estate.  I have not found him anywhere in any 1870 census; in fact, there is a real scarcity of Paces in this area in the 1870 records. It wasn't a good place for Confederate sympathizers to be in the years after the Civil War. His son Joseph was born in Saline County, MO (in east central Missouri) , in 1873. Then he took his family and widowed mother and went to Dallas County, Texas, where several of his Virginia cousins had moved after their service in the Civil War. They were the children of the only son of Francis Pace to remain in Virginia, Nickolas Pleasant Pace. I learned this from descendent Patti Rochette of Kansas City. Joseph Nicholas' daughter Ella Mae was born in Dallas County in 1876 and he buried his mother there in 1877; her tombstone can still be found in the Garland, Texas, cemetery.  I suspect all of this moving around was to get away from those who were out to get Confederate sympathizers after the Civil War. Ella Pace Rapp's obituary says he returned to Missouri in 1879 and, after a trip to Saline County, settled in Vernon County, where he and the family can be found in the 1880 census and which is still a Pace center.  I have not been able to discover what the connection to Saline County was. I now have a record of Joseph Nicholas' uncle James, a Civil War veteran, who also went to Saline County shortly after the war.

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