Appalachian Figures
On winter Sundays in mountain churches from North Carolina to eastern Kentucky, somebody still calls out a number for a Christmas carol that is not in the high-church hymnals. Voices rise on “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem,” stitched into four part harmony from memory and from a little red or maroon songbook that has seen more revivals than holidays. Open the credits and two names usually sit under the title: R. Fisher Boyce and Adger M. Pace.
Pace did not come out of a coal camp or a courthouse square in the central mountains. He was born in the South Carolina Piedmont and built his career in Lawrenceburg on Tennessee’s Highland Rim. Yet his work as a shape note teacher, textbook writer, quartet singer, and music editor for the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company helped shape the soundscape of Appalachian worship. Hymns and gospel songs that he wrote, arranged, or edited, from “That Glad Reunion Day” to “Peace, Sweet Peace,” flowed through Vaughan songbooks, singing schools, radio broadcasts, and the Church Hymnal that became standard in many mountain congregations.
The paper trail that follows him runs from vital records and family histories to copyright ledgers, songbooks, and museum labels in Lawrenceburg. Taken together, those primary sources and near primary surrogates let us trace how a boy from Pelzer, South Carolina became one of the most prolific Southern gospel writers of the twentieth century and an important, if sometimes invisible, presence in Appalachian religious music.
Pelzer Roots And A Singing Family
Vital records, cemetery registers, and family histories agree on the basic outline. Adger McDavid Pace was born on August 13, 1882 near Pelzer in Anderson County, South Carolina, the son of Reuben Pinkney Pace and Louisa Ann Huff.
Reuben belonged to a sprawling clan of Paces whose roots ran back through the Carolina mountains. In the mid twentieth century genealogy compilation The Pace Family History, one section on “Burl (Burwell) Pace” is explicitly labeled as material “sent by Adger M. Pace.” The compiler then summarizes a long line of Paces who moved from Virginia to the Saluda region of North Carolina around 1750, eventually down into South Carolina. Among the descendants is “Reubin Pace” with a son “Adger M. (musician),” and an entry that describes Adger as having two sons and a daughter and working as music editor for the Vaughan company in Lawrenceburg.
That genealogical sketch is not polished autobiography. It is a short family memorandum sent by Pace himself and folded into a larger typescript. As such, it functions as a near primary glimpse of how he understood his own place in the line: son of Reuben, descendant of Burwell Pace of the Carolina hills, and “musician” by vocation.
Find A Grave and related cemetery records suggest that Reuben and Louisa raised a large family that included sons Furman, Leland, Adger, Allie, Archie, Pet Columbus, Laney, and daughters such as Hettie and Bessie, scattered across Anderson County and later towns farther west. Census entries and compiled genealogies place the household in the textile and farm country of the Piedmont, a region where shape note singing schools and convention style singing had already taken firm root by the late nineteenth century.
Hymnological sources and later biographers add that Pace gained a deep love of music early and proved talented enough that his vocation would follow that path. Hymntime’s biographical sketch identifies him as the son of Reuben and Louisa, raised near Pelzer, and notes that he eventually married Johnnie (Johnnie Ryals Pace, 1886–1983) who would herself compose at least one published tune.
From Marriage Records To Music Editor
Marriage and census records gathered at FamilySearch and other genealogical sites show an early twentieth century pattern familiar in the upland South. At some point in the first decade of the new century Pace left South Carolina, spent time in Georgia, and married Johnnie Ryals in a Georgia county marriage recorded in the statewide register between 1785 and 1950.
The couple’s first child, Birdie Bell, was born in Georgia in 1904 and would later be buried in Tennessee, with genealogical notes and cemetery listings naming her parents as “Adger M. Pace and Johnnie Ruals [Ryals] Pace.” Subsequent records list sons Adger Monroe Pace and Gwendol Lewis “Squee” Pace. Gwendol’s own memorial and draft records again tie him back to parents “Adger McDavid Pace” and “Johnnie Ryals Pace,” reinforcing the family structure outlined in the Pace genealogy typescript.
By the time federal census takers and draft boards checked in during the 1910s and 1920s, Pace had linked that family story with a musical career. Encyclopedic and hymnological biographies agree that he entered the orbit of James D. Vaughan, the Lawrenceburg, Tennessee publisher who built one of the most influential Southern gospel enterprises of the era.
Wikipedia’s summary, drawing on newspaper obituaries and music histories, notes that Vaughan hired Pace as music editor for the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company and that he eventually taught at the Vaughan School of Music in Lawrenceburg. A local history compiled for Lawrence County’s TNGenWeb project likewise lists “Adger M. Pace” among the “other notable songwriters and composers with the Vaughan Publishing Company and School,” crediting him with songs such as “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” “I Can Tell You the Time,” “He’s the Best Friend I Ever Had,” “Peace, Sweet Peace,” and “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.”
That Lawrenceburg employment is also what Pace himself emphasized in the family-history note. In a brief entry sketching his branch of the family, he described himself as the son of Reuben, the father of Monroe, Gwendol, and Birdie Bell, and the music editor for the “John D. Vaughn [James D. Vaughan] Music Publishing Co. located at Lawrenceburg, Tennessee.”
Quartets, Radio, And The Vaughan School Of Music
Within the Vaughan organization Pace occupied several overlapping roles that mattered for Appalachian music. Hymnary’s biographical entry, which synthesizes early songbooks, radio schedules, and Who’s Who style sketches, describes him as a bass singer who spent years with the Vaughan Radio Quartet, broadcasting from station WOAN, one of the first radio stations in Tennessee.
Other sources fill in the chronology that surrounded that work. TNGenWeb’s history of the Vaughan company notes that James D. Vaughan opened his publishing house on Lawrenceburg’s public square, started a traveling male quartet to promote his songbooks in 1910, launched the Vaughan School of Music in 1911, and then opened WOAN in 1922 as Tennessee’s first radio station devoted to gospel music, broadcasting the Vaughan quartets into more than thirty states.
Within that environment Pace taught harmony, counterpoint, and composition to students who traveled from across the South to Lawrenceburg for summer sessions, and he sang bass on the road and over the air. Hymnary and later writers describe him as serving for decades as Vaughan’s music editor, beginning in 1920 and continuing for thirty seven years, while also helping organize what became the National Gospel Singing Convention.
The convention story links him directly to the shape note singing culture that took strong hold in Appalachian counties. A 2012 article in the Southern gospel magazine Tributaries, drawing on Vaughan’s house organ Vaughan’s Family Visitor, notes that the National Gospel Singing Convention grew out of a 1936 session of the Alabama State Singing Convention and that Adger M. Pace served as the new convention’s first president. Through Vaughan’s books and the traveling quartets, that convention network carried Pace’s songs and teaching into rural communities in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
Textbooks For Shape Note Students
Pace was not content to leave music pedagogy in the realm of oral tradition. In 1916 the Vaughan company published Pace’s Modern Harmony and Voice-leading, a compact music theory text for seven shape note students in the Vaughan School. WorldCat and songbook guides catalog it as a 1916 volume by “Adger M. Pace” printed in Lawrenceburg, and later scholarship on shape note harmony points to it as an important attempt to present classical voice leading rules in a form accessible to rural gospel students.
Later, Pace co authored Vaughan’s Up to Date Rudiments and Music Reader with W. B. Walbert, a manual of roughly ninety pages that combined basic theory with graduated pieces for sight singing. Catalogs and songbook collections at libraries such as Appalachian State University list it as a staple of twentieth century singing schools, alongside Vaughan songbooks that carried Pace’s compositions.
Copyright entries preserved in the Catalog of Copyright Entries and later renewal lists confirm the legal side of that work. Entries for “Pace’s Modern Harmony and Voice Leading” record an original registration by the James D. Vaughan publisher and a renewal entry in 1944 naming Pace as author, while additional entries for collections like Harmony Heaven list Adger McDavid Pace as music editor.
Those textbooks mattered in the mountains because they were the gateway into a larger culture. Students who attended Vaughan’s normal schools learned to read seven shape notation using Pace’s rudiments, sang through his practice pieces, then carried those skills back to local churches and conventions in Appalachia, where they taught others using the same books.
“Beautiful Star Of Bethlehem” In The Mountains
Among the many songs that passed through Vaughan songbooks, none has had more visible Appalachian afterlives than “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.” Primary authorship belongs to R. Fisher Boyce, a Tennessee farmer and lay preacher who wrote the text at his cabin near Murfreesboro.
Boyce’s words entered print through the Vaughan company. Hymn histories and hymnological catalogs agree that Vaughan first published the song around 1940 in a book titled Beautiful Praise and that in those early printings the music appeared with an arrangement or editing credit to Adger M. Pace. Over time some hymnals would list Pace as co composer and others would treat him more narrowly as arranger, a distinction that has fed modern authorship debates.
A 2014 article in The Bibb Voice on the hymn’s history, along with discussions summarized on the Appalachian blog Blind Pig and the Acorn, traces how Boyce’s composition moved into Vaughan’s orbit and how Pace’s editorial work secured the song a place in Southern gospel repertoire. Hymnary’s database shows “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” appearing in more than thirty hymnals, including the Church Hymnal published by Tennessee Music and Printing Company, a book widely used in Appalachian congregations.
By the late twentieth century field recordings confirm that the song had become part of mountain Christmas traditions. Folk music historian Mike Yates documented Evelyn and Douston Ramsey of Sodom Laurel in Madison County, North Carolina singing “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” in unaccompanied harmony, later issued on the anthology Far in the Mountains. Commentary on that album notes that the song came into the Ramseys’ repertoire through gospel songbooks and radio, rather than the older ballad tradition, and credits Boyce’s text and Pace’s Vaughan arrangement.
In that sense, every time a small Appalachian church gathers around that song they are participating in a chain that runs from Boyce’s Tennessee cabin, through Pace’s arrangement in a Lawrenceburg songbook, into the Church Hymnal, and then out into the hills.
“That Glad Reunion Day” And Reunion Theology
If “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” is Pace’s best known Christmas contribution to Appalachian hymnody, “That Glad Reunion Day” represents his most beloved heaven song. Hymnary’s entry for the hymn identifies both words and music as the work of Adger M. Pace and dates its first publication to 1940 in a Vaughan songbook.
A digitized page from the songbook Crowning Harmony shows “That Glad Reunion Day” printed in four shape notation with the copyright line attributing text and tune to Pace with a 1940 date. Later copyright renewal compilations and modern licensing services, which rely on the records of the U.S. Copyright Office, confirm an original 1940 registration and a 1968 renewal under Pace’s name.
The text belongs to a familiar Southern gospel pattern. Pace imagines a day when “the saints of all the ages” gather, a reunion where separation and grief give way to recognition and joy. Even in paraphrase it is easy to understand why the song spread through revival meetings and funerals in mountain communities that experienced frequent loss through mining accidents, disease, and migration.
From the standpoint of sources, “That Glad Reunion Day” is especially valuable because it is so clearly traceable to Pace. Unlike camp meeting songs whose authorship is obscure, this piece leaves a neat trail from first publication in a named Vaughan book under his own byline, through copyright ledgers, into later hymnals such as Great Gospel Songs and Hymns and the Church Hymnal, and finally into contemporary recordings by Southern gospel and bluegrass groups.
Other Pace compositions followed similar paths. Biographical sketches and Vaughan histories credit him with writing or co writing pieces such as “Jesus Is All I Need,” “The Homecoming Week,” “The Happy Jubilee,” and “Peace, Sweet Peace,” many of which appear in hymnals and songbook collections used in Appalachian churches.
Pseudonyms, Editing, And A Hall Of Fame Legacy
Part of the reason Pace’s hand shows up so widely in songbooks is that he did not always sign his own name. The hymnological site Hymntime, which compiles data from title pages, copyright lines, and music histories, lists several pseudonyms he used, including “Millard A. Glenn,” “Charles H. Huff,” “Spencer G. Benke,” and “B. W. Dalton.”
Under his own name and those pen names he edited or contributed to hundreds of Vaughan songbooks and wrote or co wrote what the Gospel Music Association estimates as more than 3,500 songs across his career. Contemporary discographies and music databases list his name in the credits of numerous recordings from the mid twentieth century and later reissues, whether as composer, lyricist, or arranger.
Those cumulative contributions led to belated institutional recognition. In 1999 the Southern Gospel Music Association inducted “Adger McDavid Pace (1882–1959)” into its Hall of Fame, joining his old employer James D. Vaughan and other figures of the early quartet era. The accompanying profiles emphasize his work as songwriter, teacher, quartet member, and shape note advocate, echoing the themes already visible in the primary sources.
Lawrenceburg’s Museum And A Dunn Cemetery Headstone
Pace’s working life centered on Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, where he and Johnnie raised their family and where he taught at the Vaughan School of Music. Obituary notices in the Nashville Tennessean and later summaries reported that the couple lived at 622 North Military Avenue in Lawrenceburg, a modest address not far from the square where Vaughan’s business stood.
On February 12, 1959, Pace died at age seventy six in a Lawrenceburg hospital, reportedly from a stroke. His obituary, “Adger M. Pace Rites Sunday,” described him as a widely known gospel songwriter and longtime music editor for Vaughan, and announced funeral arrangements in Lawrenceburg.
His grave lies a few miles outside town at Dunn Cemetery, also known as Dunn Methodist Church Cemetery, near Leoma. Find A Grave’s memorial lists his birth date as August 13, 1882 and death date as February 12, 1959, with his parents and children linked to related memorials. Photographs show a simple stone with his name and dates beside family members.
Back in Lawrenceburg, his professional legacy rests in archives and in a small museum. Newspaper features on the James D. Vaughan Memorial Museum, along with his updated Wikipedia entry, note that the museum preserves Pace’s piano along with Vaughan School artifacts, using them to interpret the early history of Southern gospel.
Together, the headstone, the museum labels, and the genealogical note he sent to the Pace family historian show the same core identity that he carried from Pelzer to Lawrenceburg. He was a son and father in a long Carolina line, a working musician, and a teacher who believed in the power of printed shape notes and singing schools to train ordinary people to sing the gospel.
Hearing Pace In Appalachian Churches Today
Histories of Southern gospel, such as James R. Goff’s Close Harmony and Charles K. Wolfe’s In Close Harmony: The Story of the Louvin Brothers, tend to focus on nationally known quartets and recording artists. Yet both works gesture toward the background infrastructure of publishers, teachers, and editors that made those performances possible. In that infrastructure Adger McDavid Pace stands near the center.
For Appalachian history his importance lies less in celebrity than in circulation. Through Vaughan’s songbooks, the National Gospel Singing Convention, radio broadcasts from WOAN, and later the Church Hymnal, his songs and arrangements entered the repertory of countless mountain churches and singing schools. When an Appalachian congregation sings “That Glad Reunion Day” at a funeral or leans into the chorus of “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” on a December morning, they are joining a practice whose paper trail runs straight through the desk of a meticulous music editor on North Military Avenue in Lawrenceburg.
Pace himself did not live to hear bluegrass bands and revival choirs record his work for global audiences. But the primary sources that survive, from his own genealogical note to copyright registrations and songbook pages, let us see how a South Carolina born son of Reuben and Louisa became part of the everyday soundtrack of Appalachian faith.
Sources & Further Reading
Vital records, genealogical compilations, and cemetery data for the Pace family, including Find A Grave entries for Adger McDavid Pace and his parents Reuben Pinkney and Louisa Ann Huff; FamilySearch and related genealogical databases summarizing births, marriages, and children; and associated memorials for Birdie Bell Alford, Gwendol Lewis Pace, and Pet Columbus Pace. Find a Grave+6Find a Grave+6FamilySearch+6
The Pace Family History (digitized at Internet Archive), especially the section titled “Burl (Burwell) Pace History: Sent by Adger M. Pace,” which preserves Pace’s own brief account of his immediate family and his work as music editor in Lawrenceburg within a larger genealogy of Carolina Paces. Internet Archive
“Adger M. Pace,” Wikipedia biography, synthesizing obituaries, music histories, and Tennessean features on the James D. Vaughan Memorial Museum, including details on his tenure as Vaughan music editor, his participation in Vaughan quartets, his home address in Lawrenceburg, and the preservation of his piano. Wikipedia+1
“Adger M. Pace” person entry at Hymnary.org, which provides a concise biography noting his bass singing in the Vaughan Radio Quartet, his long service as music editor, his teaching at the Vaughan School of Music, and his leadership role in organizing the National Singing Convention, along with listings of his songs in various hymnals. Hymnary+1
“Adger McDavid Pace” biographical entry at Hymntime / The Cyber Hymnal, identifying his parents, wife, burial place, and the pseudonyms he used in songbook credits, and the “Mrs. Adger M. Pace” entry at Hymnary.org for Johnnie Ryals Pace and her work. Hymntime+2Hymntime+2
“James D. Vaughan Publishing Company and School of Music,” Lawrence County TNGenWeb, for local history of the Vaughan enterprise, its radio station WOAN, the Vaughan School of Music, the National Gospel Singing Convention, and the list of “other notable songwriters and composers” that includes Pace and several of his best known songs. TNGenWeb
James R. Goff, Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and Charles K. Wolfe, In Close Harmony: The Story of the Louvin Brothers (University Press of Mississippi, 1996), for broader context on Vaughan’s publishing operation, the quartet tradition, and Pace’s place in the early Southern gospel industry. TheScottSpot+1
Catalog of Copyright Entries and later renewal compilations (as digitized by Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and related repositories), documenting registrations and renewals for works such as Pace’s Modern Harmony and Voice-leading, Harmony Heaven, and later song collections edited by Pace. WorldCat+4Internet Archive+4Reading Rooms+4
Hymn specific histories, including Hymnary entries for “That Glad Reunion Day” and other Pace songs, The Bibb Voice’s “Hymn History: Beautiful Star of Bethlehem,” the Mainly Norfolk notes on Appalachian recordings of the carol, and Tipper Pressley’s Blind Pig and the Acorn post “Oh Beautiful Star of Bethlehem,” which together trace the song’s origins with R. Fisher Boyce, Pace’s arrangement for the Vaughan company, and its adoption in Appalachian congregations. Blind Pig and The Acorn+4Hymnary+4Hymnary+4
Southern Gospel Music Association and Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame entries for Adger McDavid Pace, for concise summaries of his career as songwriter, teacher, and quartet singer and for the estimate that he wrote or contributed to more than 3,500 songs. Wikipedia+1