In the fall of the same year Mr. Hollister began work on the Sumner House, the contract price being $16,000.00. The brick used were made on the ground. The lumber came by boat from Pittsburgh, Penn. This hotel was completed in the summer of the following year. It was built by the town company, which owed Mr. Hollister $3,000.00 at the time of his death, a few years ago. Mr. Hollister lived in Sumner twelve years, vigorously fighting Atchison. In the fall of 1858 he built a mill, in company with Al Barber, later adding a gristmill, which was the second built in the county, the first having been built in Atchison, by William Bowman. Mr. Hollister went down the river in a boat in January, 1859, and when he reached his old home in the Catskill mountains, he crossed the Hudson river on the ice. During this trip east he was married to Miss Harriet Carroll, a lineal descendant of Charles Carroll, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His wife returned with him to Sumner, and they afterwards moved to Atchison, where they lived for many years. Mr. Hollister died March 28, 1910. JOHN TAYLOR. John Taylor, who for many years lived on a farm immediately south of the State Orphans’ Home, was a resident of Missouri, a mile and a quarter above East Atchison in 1844, ten years before Kansas was opened for settlement. His father, Joseph Taylor, came to the Platte Purchase in 1838, from Pennsylvania, settling near Weston. At that time most of the best claims were taken. John Taylor’s recollection was that the very earliest settler in that vicinity was in 1837. Joseph Taylor did not secure a very good claim, and afterward removed to Andrew county, finally locating a mile above East Atchison, in 1844. John Taylor said that George Million was living on the present site of East Atchison when his father’s family settled in the bottom. It was Mr. Taylor’s opinion that George Million settled in East Atchison in 1842, and that he did not start his ferry until 1850. In the spring of that year John Taylor crossed the river on George Million’s flat-boat ferry, and went to California, in company with his brother, Joe. There was no wagon road running west from Atchison at that time. John and Joe Taylor mined in California for eighteen months, never making over $20.00 per day, and usually only $5.00. They returned home by the way of the Isthmus of Panama, and John Taylor got the small-pox at Glascow, Mo., which did not break out on him until he reached East Atchison. This was supposed to be the first case of small-pox in this section of the country. All the other members of the family got it, and the wife of Jim Stultz, who came in to help his mother, also got it. Their physician was a Doctor Ankrom, who lived in the Narrows, near Rushville, and he got it, too. This was in the winter of 1851 and 1852. In September, 1854, ten years after settling in East Atchison, Mr. Taylor came to this side of the river.