Lingering "in a semi-conscious condition, never speaking, but being able to recognize the friends who gathered around his bed in anxious solicitude,"[11] he died at his home in Lancaster on February 6, 1871.

[12] Within a day of his death, multiple tributes were written about him by attorneys, elected officials and other civic leaders, and published in local newspapers.

"Oliver James Dickey, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, said of Hiester:[14] "The descendant on his father's side of one of the oldest and best German families of the State, and of another almost as old and as well-known on the part of his mother; an only son ... born to wealth and highly educated, this great country looked to see what career Isaac E. Hiester would carve out for himself.... His word was as good as his bond, and no man's bond was better.

He was a worthy son of that great German race, which has given to Pennsylvania its best Governors, and which has converted this wide county, and almost the whole eastern part of this State, into a garden.

He possessed a peculiar eloquence which was calculated to sway both Court and jury, was a man of the highest honor and elevated character.

His virtues will outlive the marble which may mark his last resting place, and his memory will be preserved when the pillars of this temple of justice, in which his eloquent voice was so often heard, shall have crumbled into dust.

It was described by local newspapers as "one of the finest specimens in sculpture in wood yet executed in this country," and featured an "eagle resting upon a massive pillar, with elaborate capital of black oak.