JOHN S. LAKE , farmer, post office, Cantrall, section sixteen, was born in Sangamon county, Illinois, January 9, 1840, a son of Bayliss G. and Eliza Lake. The subject of this sketch married Miss Mary C. Brittan; she was born in Fancy Creek township in 1848. The fruits of this marriage is three living children, Dora, James, and Edith May. Mr. Lake enlisted in the army in 1862, in the One Hundredth and Fourteenth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, Company G; was in the Fifteenth Army Corps, under General Sherman. The first general engagement was at Jackson, Mississippi; then at the siege of Vicksburg, and capture; then to Black River, where they went into camp on Bear creek, from there went to Memphis, where they were put on guard duty, where they remained until the spring of 1863. From there went to Guntown under General Sturgis, where they participated in the fight, when he was wounded and taken prisoner, and taken to Mobile, where he laid in the hospital two months, where he had to dress his own wounds for some time, when the wounded had to wash their own bandages, scattering gangrene through the whole hospital. From there were removed to Cahaba, Ala., three hundred miles up the river, where they received better treatment, where they were kept a couple of months. Mr. Lake, with others, was sent to Vicksburg, where he was exchanged, October 24, 1864. He received thirty days' furlough, after which he was ordered to report to Camp Butler, Springfield, where he remained until the spring of 1865, when he was discharged. He has one hundred and sixty-three acres of land, all of which is under a high state of cultivation, valued at $60 per acre. Raises seventy-five acres of corn, thirty acres of wheat; turns off twelve head of hogs; keeps twenty cattle. In politics he is a Republican.