CHARLES E. HAY, of Smith & Hay, wholesale grocers, was born in Salem, Indiana, 1841; was brought by his parents in infancy to Hancock county, Illinois, and was there reared and educated. At the age of nineteen years he enlisted as a private in the three months volunteer service; August 5, 1861, was appointed Second Lieutenant in the Mounted Riflemen, whose title was changed a short time after to Cavalry; Mr. Hay's regiment becoming the third Illinois Cavalry, and he receiving promotion to First Lieutenant. From the fall of 1861 till the summer of 1863, he served as a staff officer on the staff of General David Hunter. He was then taken sick, which necessitated absence from his regiment for some months; rejoined it, and at Little Rock, Arkansas, in October, 1865, retired from the service as brevet Captain, and the same month entered the grocery business in Springfield. In the spring of 1873, Mr. Hay was elected Mayor of the city, on the Democratic ticket, and was again elected in 1875; also served on the Board of Education one year. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and has taken the Master's Royal Arch and Knight Templar's degrees, and is Parish Clerk in the Episcopal church. In 1865, Mr. Hay united in marriage with Miss Mary Ridgely, daughter of N. H. Ridgely, President of the Ridgely's National Bank, of Springfield, and they have three sons and a daughter alive. Mr. Hay's parents, Charles and Helen (Leonard) Hay, reside in Warsaw, Hancock county, Illinois, aged respectively eighty and seventy-six years. His paternal grandfather, John Hay, settled in Springfield about 1835, and was a resident of the city until his death, in 1865, at the age of ninety.