Herbert Battles Tanner, the first child of Ford and Mary Ann (Battles) Tanner, was born in the village of Whitewater, Wisconsin, on February 13, 1859. Five years later they moved to Watertown, Wisconsin, where Herbert's brother Walter Scott Tanner was born on May 10, 1864. In late August 1864 the family moved to Lafayette, Indiana, where Herbert's brother, Harry Cuyler Tanner, and sister, Stella Ford Tanner, were born on November 24, 1866 and October 23, 1869, respectively. Herbert went to school, discovered literature, and became interested in politics; during the election campaign of 1868 he heard General Grant speak in a pasture across the tracks from the Wabash railroad. He worked too, now and then, as basket maker, machine operator, and printer's devil. After the failure of Ford Tanner's basket shop, the family left Lafayette in early August 1872 and went to Chicago. There Herbert continued his schooling, which included one year (1874) at business college. He clerked in a bookshop, dry goods house, and drugstore; he also worked in the basket factory where his father was foreman. In November 1875 Tanner began selling baskets on the road; in May and June 1876 he sold baskets in eastern cities, such as Philadelphia, where he also visited the Centennial Exposition, and Washington. The family moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, in the fall of 1876. Here Tanner, whose paternal and maternal grandfathers had been physicians, decided to embark on a medical career. He matriculated in the Indiana Medical College on October 10, 1876; to earn the money he needed to continue his medical studies he sold baskets in the western states the following summer. During the last week of July he was delayed in St. Louis on account of the bitter railroad strike in progress there, his impressions of which he recorded. Tanner graduated from medical school on February 28, 1878; in the summer he went to Washington, D.C., with the hope of becoming an assistant surgeon in the navy, but he lacked the funds necessary to secure such an appointment. He then practiced medicine in Chicago, where his parents had returned on March 17, 1878; sold baskets in Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana (March-November 1879); and, on November 20, 1879, took his former place as shipping clerk in the basket factory. At twenty-one years old, with his prospects uncertain, but with the intention of practicing medicine, Herbert Battles Tanner settled in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, on July 27, 1880. He lived in Kaukauna for the following thirty-three years, and there he established his reputation.
Tanner married Mary Georgina Miller Boyd on September 1, 1881. They had three sons and one daughter: Kenneth Boyd Tanner (1883-1965), Blanche Lawe Tanner (1885-1948), Harold Ford Tanner (1887-1962), and Herbert Johnson Tanner (1894- ). Members of Mary's family--Boyd and Johnson paternally, Lawe and Rankin maternally--had been active participants in the early history of the United States and Wisconsin. From the 1880's on, Tanner was engaged in the study of the genealogy of his wife's family as well as his own, the history of Kaukauna and Wisconsin, and other historical subjects. He became a member of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1887. Of Tanner's children, Blanche and Herbert shared his interest in the family's genealogy.
Tanner practiced medicine in several capacities. He was the first health officer of Kaukauna, serving as City Physician from 1886 until 1893. He was a district surgeon for the Chicago & North Western Railway Company in the 1880s and 1890s, and for four years was secretary and treasurer, and for one term president, of the Fox River Valley Medical Society. He had an active medical practice in Kaukauna until 1906.
Tanner also was active in the economic, political, and social life of Kaukauna and Wisconsin. Resourceful in business, he took part in several varied ventures. He participated in companies which sought to develop the mineral resources of Alaska, the Gogebic district of Michigan, and Cripple Creek, Colorado; only the last yielded a decent return to the investors. He was president of a short-lived furniture factory in Kaukauna and owned a corner drugstore (1898-1906) and bowling alley (circa 1904) in town. One enterprise, the Rio Tamasopo Sugar Company, which he helped organize in 1903, proved highly successful for ten years. Located in the state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, the firm owned large tracts of land and a refinery which, when completed in 1908, had a capacity of 60,000 pounds of sugar a day. Tanner was president of the company for ten of its fifteen years of existence; he spent the winter months of 1903 to 1918 in San Luis Potosi, attending to the business and serving as physician to the workers and their families.
Tanner was a lifelong Republican. His political career began in the 1880's and reached its high point in Wisconsin in the 1890's. In 1885 he was elected a director of the school board of Kaukauna's north district; circa 1890 he served as clerk of the school board of the south district, when Nicollet High School was built; from 1886 until 1893 he was City Physician, a political appointment; from 1890 until 1893 he was a member of the U.S. pension examining board. Tanner was elected the first Republican mayor of Kaukauna on April 3, 1894 and re-elected for a second term on April 2, 1895. Elected as alderman for the fourth ward on April 5, 1898, he served two years on the common council, where he advocated the establishment of a free public library. Appointed first president of the library board, he served there for four years (1904-1907). Tanner's political activities and influence extended beyond Kaukauna, too. He was appointed by Governor William H. Upham, and re-appointed by Governor Edward Scofield to be state supervisor of inspectors of illuminating oils for Wisconsin; he served from January 17, 1895 until February 1901, for which he received the fee paid by the oil companies, of two cents a barrel on all the oil used in the state. While holding this appointment, he invented and marketed a gas torch which more easily and safely tested the flashing point of illuminating and other oils. He was elected a delegate to the Republican Party's county, congressional, and state conventions until conventions were replaced by primaries. At the Republican convention of 1900, after many ballots had been cast in a three-cornered contest, Tanner lost his bid to become the party's candidate for the eighth congressional district. When Robert La Follette, as a progressive Republican, overturned the party stalwarts and went on to win the gubernatorial election, Tanner lost influence in Republican state politics. It was at this time, February 1901, that the new governor decided that the state supervisor of inspectors of illuminating oils should receive a salary for his services instead of the fee paid on each barrel by the oil companies. Tanner also was active in civic and fraternal organizations. He was a member of the Masonic Order, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Modern Woodmen of America, Independent Order of Foresters, Knights of Pythias, and Elks. Both he and his wife belonged to the Congregational Church.
Tanner left Kaukauna in early October 1913, perhaps for reasons of health. Another possible explanation is that he did so because he had fallen into disfavor in the Fox River Valley, some of whose inhabitants, following Tanner's advice, had invested in Mexican land and lost their investment about this time. (Tanner's parents had moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1888, where his father died on May 25, 1906; his mother moved to Neenah, Wisconsin, the following year, where she died on April 26, 1913.) Tanner and his wife moved to California, first staying in San Diego eighteen months, then in Los Angeles for four months. They next moved to Texas: in 1915 to Amarillo, where their son Harold and his family already were living; in 1916 to San Antonio; and in 1919 to Eastland. In Amarillo and San Antonio Tanner was involved in several business ventures, such as the sale of IMP automobiles and the importation of exotic Yucatan parrots. He also wished to serve the war effort and managed to enroll in the Citizens Military Training Camp at Fort Sam Houston on June 12, 1916, although he was over the age for service in the military. After completing basic training on July 8, 1916, he applied to the Medical Reserve Corps to serve as an army physician, but his application was rejected because of his age, fifty-seven, and because his knowledge of medicine was dated. Tanner, however, did manage to serve in 1918 as a dollar-a-year man assisting the quartermaster at Fort Sam Houston. After leaving Wisconsin, Tanner continued to spend winters in Mexico until 1918-1919. The Rio Tamasopo Sugar Company had been in decay since 1913, the result in large part of disorder in the countryside during the revolution after 1910. In March 1918 the Mexican government seized the plantation and Tanner left the country, never to return. The expropriation occurred after a Mexican court had ruled against Tanner who, in compliance with United States wartime regulations, refused to honor a contract to sell sugar cane to a German citizen. Tanner agreed to sell his one-third interest in the company in April; but as late as 1929 he and his son Kenneth, who had also helped manage the company, were claiming compensation for losses they were forced to accept in 1918. In January 1919, in financial difficulty, they settled in Eastland located in the Ranger oil field, where they hoped to profit from the current Texas oil boom. Tanner was president of the short-lived Eastland International Oil Company, secretary of the Okey Ranger Oil Company, and receiver of the Gordon Petroleum Company, Inc., the last two of which were organized by Lieutenant Colonel Robert D. Gordon. These companies apparently did not prosper. In Eastland, where Tanner lived the last fifteen years of his life, he was characteristically busy. He practiced medicine, but only for one year (1921), and delivered addresses to the Eastland City Medical and Dental Society. He devoted himself to his genealogical and historical studies and contributed many articles on his interests and experiences to the Kaukauna Times and other newspapers. The Kaukauna Times printed his “History of Kaukauna's Revolutionary Hero [Captain Hendrick Aupaumut],” in August 1926 and his “History of the Streets of Kaukauna,” in March 1930. The latter was published in book form the following year. He also became a member of the fledgling West Texas Historical Association in 1925. He was active in politics. Every two years he was on the Republican county ticket for some office. In 1922 he was the party's nominee for county treasurer. Tanner, realizing the weak minority position of the Republican Party in Eastland County, conducted good-humored campaigns against hopeless odds, as for example, in 1926, when he was the party's candidate against the populist Democrat Thomas L. Blanton in the race for the seventeenth congressional district. In 1928 several friends tried unsuccessfully to secure his nomination as the party's candidate for lieutenant governor. In the spring of the same year he displayed his skill as a promoter. He claimed to have discovered in the cornerstone of the Eastland Courthouse a horned toad, Ol' Rip, which had survived a confinement of thirty-one years; the story was reported and wondered at throughout the country, which thereby came to know of Eastland. In the summer of 1929 he was chosen secretary of the chamber of commerce of the city, a post he held for four years. Herbert Battles Tanner died in Eastland, Texas, on December 4, 1933. His wife, Mary Georgina Miller (Boyd) Tanner, died five years later, on October 12, 1938.
