Elisha C. Pace, a successful physician and surgeon of Osawatomie, is a native of Indiana, having been born near Leavenworth, Crawford county, Sept. 7, 1861. He is the son of Elisha C. and Sarah Ann (Haskins) Pace, the former of whom was a Virginian by birth, while the latter was a native of Orange county, Indiana. The Pace family is of English descent and was founded in New England in an early day by one of that name who was an ex-member of the British Parliament, the exact date of whose immigration to America is not known. Elisha C. Pace, Sr., was a farmer by avocation. When the storm of Civil war broke over the country, he tendered his services to the cause of the Union, enlisting in Company A, Forty-ninth Indiana infantry, which was organized at Jeffersonville, Ind., and was mustered in Nov. 21, 1861. The regiment left the state December 11 for Bardstown, Ky., and left there Jan. 12, 1862, for Cumberland Ford, where it remained until June, suffering greatly at the latter place from disease. It was in the skirmishes at Big Tree Gap and Cumberland Gap, Ky., in March, 1862; accompanied General Morgan's forces to Cumberland Gap in June, and occupied the place on the 18th, the enemy retiring the same day. The regiment remained there until September, 1862, when it joined in the retreat to the Ohio river, reaching Greenupsburg, Ky., early in October. It proceeded to Coal Mouth, W. Va., and in November was ordered to Memphis, joining Sherman's army on the expedition to Vicksburg. The rigors of war had been too severe, however, for Mr. Pace and on March 21, 1863, he succumbed to a chronic disease, his death occurring at the Wesleyan Hospital, St. Louis, Mo., with the interment in the National Cemetery at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis. Dr. Elisha C. Pace is one of five children born to his parents, all of whom, except the eldest brother, are living. The mother remarried and continued to reside in Indiana until 1910, when she came to Osawatomie to spend her closing years with her son, Dr. Pace, she now having reached the age of eighty-one.

Dr. Pace was but an infant at the time of his father's death and when six years of age went to Iowa, where he was reared by his father's people. In the fall of 1877 he and his brother, Theophilus, came to Kansas, and for two years were engaged in farming and stock raising in Phillips county. From there they returned eastward to Bates county, Missouri, where Dr. Pace supplemented his public school education by a course at Butler Academy, Butler, Mo. To prepare himself for the profession he had chosen as his life work, that of medicine, he became a student in the office of Dr. Wilhoit, of Paola, where he completed the course in 1880. He at once located at Osawatomie, for practice, and has there successfully continued to the present time. He is both a registered pharmacist and a registered optician and has given the defects of the eye close study, so that he has been very successful in fitting glasses to remedy such defects.

In 1889 Dr. Pace wedded Miss Linna L. Long, a native of Miami county, Kansas, and a resident of Sugar Creek township at the time of her marriage. She is a daughter of Myron Long, one of the very earliest pioneers of the state, who came from Ohio in 1850. He, too, wore the blue during the Civil war, serving as a member of the Fifth Kansas cavalry. The father is deceased, but the mother resides in Osawatomie. Dr. and Mrs. Pace have two children—Cleda May, a nurse at the Osawatomie state hospital, and Edwin Chester, at the parental home. Dr. Pace is a Democrat in his political adherency and takes a commendable interest in public affairs. He has served as a member of the Osawatomie Board of Education and also was a member of the Board of Pension Examiners during President Cleveland's second administration. In the interests of his profession he associates as a member of the National Eclectic Medical Association, and fraternally affiliates with the Masonic order, the Knights of Pythias, and several fraternal insurance orders. In church faith and membership he is a Christian.