Dan Taggart was a major figure for many years in parish and village life. He was born in the long demolished building called 'The Thack' which once stood on the corner formed by the Zoar Road and the B802 Kilsyth-Condorrat road. He briefly attended Drumglass School, then Holy Cross Croy, and St. Mungo's Academy to which he had won a bursary. His eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth birthdays were spent in the armed forces where he saw World War I service in Italy, Greece, the Balkans and France. After the Armistice, still aged only twenty, Dan became a coalminer, as was the local male custom.
 
By 1926 with its General Strike, Dan had become a miners' strike leader in the fight for a just wage after the coal-owners had halved the miners' income. With others, he also pursued the fight for financial support from Parish Councils for the children of mining families suffering deprivation due to the harsh terms of employment. He carried the fight to Dumbarton County Council to replace the flat rate of assistance with a public assistance scale that would relate benefits to the number of children in a household. His interest in public affairs thus whetted, Dan joined the County Council as District Councillor for Croy, a position he was to retain for fifty years.
 
D.H. Taggart played in Croy Parish Silver Band in the 1920s, but on his election as Councillor in 1929, he had to lay aside his musical ambitions. He rose to be Chairman of Dunbartonshire County Council Education Committee and in the 1950s became a valued committee member on Cumbernauld Development Corporation to help direct the evolution of Cumbernauld New Town. In other areas of his life, Dan was a businessman, combining his ownership of a thriving contracting business with a flair for running the local shop-cum-post office in Croy.
 
In his advancing years Dan was granted honorary membership of Croy Parish Silver Band in recognition of a lifetime of support and attendance at Band contests and engagements. He was also a Justice of the Peace and in 1971 Her Majesty the Queen conferred on him an M.B.E. for his long contribution to public service. This was followed in 1973 by the conferral by the Holy Father, Pope Paul VI of the Bene Merenti Medal for services to the Church and Catholic community.
 
Daniel Hughes Taggart died on 2nd October 1983, a few weeks short of his 85th birthday, after a long life well spent in public service. At his funeral the Croy Parish Silver Band enhanced the celebration of his life with sacred music for an old and honoured man of Croy.