HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY,
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of that city by rebel General Longstreet and, in December, 1863, was sent on a special mission over the Cumberland Mountains on horseback to Danville, Ky., and to Chicago. Upon his return to Knoxville he found that Commissary Rankin had resigned and returned to Chicago. He at once was tendered a position and served as clerk for Post Commissary Capt. James Miller, of the Sixty-fifth Illinois, at Knoxville. Tenn., until the reorganization of the Army of the Ohio, Twenty-third Army Corps, preparatory to the Atlanta campaign. In February, 1864, he was promoted to the position of Chief Clerk to Col. R. B. Treat, Chief Commissary on the staff of Gen. J. M. Schofield, for the Army of the Ohio, Twenty-third Army Corps, remaining in this position nearly two years, when, in April, 1865, he was recommended by General Schofield for appointment as Commissary of Subsistence, with the rank of Major, for assignment as Disbursing Commissary, but a general order from the War Department, Washington, made further appointments impossible. Mr. Sylla was connected with the Atlanta campaigns and accompanied the Twenty-third Army Corps to Pulaski, Tenn.; was at the battles of Columbia, Spring Hill, Franklin and Nashville, went with the Corps via Washington, D. C., to Wilmington, N. C.; was at the battle of Kinston, and was present at the meeting of Sherman's and Schofield's armies at Goldsboro, and remained at Raleigh, N. C., until the latter part of September, 1865, returning with General Schofield's headquarters to Cincinnati in October, and to his home in Elgin in November, 1865, making a service in connection with the Union army of four years and four months. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and Secretary of the Thirty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteers' Association. After more than four years' service in the War of the Rebellion, having returned to his home in Elgin, he was a partner of his former Captain, M. B. Baldwin, in the drug business for a year, but finding this occupation too confining, in company with his father and brother he engaged in the foundry business. In the spring of 1874 he was solicited to be a candidate for Alderman in the new Fifth Ward of Elgin, and was elected over his opponent, Joslyn, being re-elected the following spring over Arwin E. Price. In March, 1875, upon his resignation as Alderman, he was appointed City Clerk of Elgin, a position which by successive appointments he held for five years. In 1880 the city having organized under the General State Law, he was elected City Clerk for the term of two years, and has been re-elected consecutively since that date. In 1875 he was also elected Town Clerk, and has held that office since that date, making a record of holding the offices of City Clerk and Town Clerk, at the same time, for the term of twenty-eight years. He was also elected Secretary of the Board of Education in 1877; was elected a member of the Board of Education and Secretary the following year, and held these positions for sixteen years, consecutively. He has been a deacon in the Baptist church of Elgin for twenty-four years. No man holding office under the present city regime is more deserving of success and esteem, having made a record in his present official position of which any citizen might feel proud. Mr. Sylla was married Dec. 5, 1871, to Kate E. Raymond, only daughter of George B. Raymond, and they have had four children: Mary E. (now Mrs. Edward R. Davery), Daisy A., George B. R., and Marguerite K. Sylla. Mr. Sylla and family are members of the First Baptist church, Elgin, and he is a Deacon and Clerk of the church. In politics he is a Republican.
W. A. TANNER, pioneer farmer and merchant, Aurora, Ill.; born at Watertown, Jefferson County, N. Y., Feb. 17, 1815; came to Kane County, Ill., in September, 1835, locating on a tract of government land, and eventually became the owner of a large estate in Kane County, as well as land in Kansas and Minnesota; became interested in the hardware business in 1855, conducting a successful trade until the time of his death, Dec. 29, 1892. He was married July 9, 1840, to Miss Anna Makepeace, who died Oct. 1, 1900, leaving eight living children, viz.: Eugene, Henry R., Mrs. Florence Pattison, Mrs. Amy Johnson, Imogene, Mrs. Mary Hopkins, Mrs. Martha Thornton and George W.
RALPH C. TAYLOR, physician and surgeon, Lily Lake, Ill.; born at Milburn, Lake County, Ill., Nov. 12, 1869; obtained his preliminary education in the public schools of his native village, Hillsdale (Michigan) College, the Northern Indiana Normal School (department of pharmacy), and received his medical train-
