John Preston Kellogg (1807 - 1881)

Born 14 Feb 1807 in Hadley, Hampshire, Massachusetts, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 10 May 1881 at age 74 in Battle Creek, Calhoun, Michigan, United States

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Biography

John Preston8 Kellogg (Joshiah7, Gardner6, Nathaniel5, Nathaniel4, Joseph3, Martin2, Phillippe1) was born February 14, 1807 in Hadley, Massachusetts. John married (1) Mary Ann Call. She was born October 01, 1811.

John Preston Kellogg and his wife Mary lived on the bank of the Connecticut River, just across from Northampton, Massachusetts. Times were bad, and John's friend, Lansing Dickinson, far out west in the land of Michigan, wrote tempting letters of conditions there. Learning that he could buy land there for $1.25 an acre, John Kellogg loaded his family and all they possessed into a carriage in July of 1834 and headed for the Erie Canal at Albany, in upper New York State. Arriving there, they boarded a horse-drawn barge. Pulling slowly from a well-worn path on the bank, the horse towed the boat to which he was harnessed up the canal toward a new world for the Kellogg family. Soon the horse-drawn boat reached the Great Lakes. John then made arrangements for his family to board a ship that would take them westward.

Heading up the Great Lakes, they stopped at the Michigan trading post of Detroit. It was a booming town of 5,000, and here Kellogg purchased another horse-drawn carriage and headed cross-country to Dickinson's Settlement, not far from present-day Flint, Michigan.

For $400, he finally decided on 320 acres that was located about two miles out of the village of Flint, but soon discovered that only fourteen white families lived in the entire region. Chippewa Indians were already camping on part of the 320 acres and they had no intention of moving, so Kellogg thought best not to try and evict them. Fortunately, he also found an old abandoned one-room log cabin on another part of the acreage, so John, his wife Mary, and their two sons, Merritt and Smith Moses, moved into it for the winter.

That first winter was a hard one, and next spring the father and his two boys set to work, gradually clearing the forest so crops could be planted. Before long a two-story 18 by 24-foot log cabin had been erected.

But it was a damp area, and Mary had contracted tuberculosis. When they called in the doctor, he said to bleed her periodically from a vein, and inhale resin fumes sprinkled over a shovelful of live coals. When their children became sick, the local doctor, using the remedies of the day, gave them something to induce vomiting, bled them, and then blistered their skin with a harsh chemical. And when John's eyes became inflamed, the doctor placed a wasp sting on the back of his neck to "draw out the blood" from the inflamed eyes.

Ann Stanley, the daughter of a nearby blacksmith, was eventually hired to help Mary with the housework. Mary recognized Ann's good traits and industrious ways, and told John that, if she should die, to ask Ann to take care of the children. At the time of the birth of their fifth child, Mary, so weakened by tuberculosis, passed away.

Saddled with debt, uncertain what to do, John had the good sense to follow Mary's advice: he did ask Ann to help with the children. But by now she was the local school marm and was not interested in baby-sitting John's children. Her work was now at the small Threadville school, and she told him no. Many times he came over and pleaded for help with the children, but all to no avail: each time the answer was a decided no.

Finally John, in utter desperation at the task before him, asked her to marry him. This she did.

He married (2) Ann Janette Stanley March 29, 1842. She was born March 20, 1824. Children of John Kellogg and Ann Stanley are:

1. John Harvey9 Kellogg, born February 26, 1852.

#Will Keith Kellogg, born April 07, 1860.

1. Nine other Kellogg children.

Now matters began to improve. Ann set to work, disciplined the children, and told John what needed to be done on the farm. On her advice, he bought sheep, so they would have the materials needed for better clothing. Then she told him to grow clover instead of swamp grass. Again John did as he was told, and selling the clover seed at five dollars a bushel, he was able to pay off their debts, build a large addition to the home, and purchase a light-spring, two-seater wagon.

In 1849 the family moved to Livingston County. There they settled in Tyrone Township near the small community of Battle Creek. That summer, their two-year-old daughter, Emma, contracted what Ann believed to be an inflammation of the lungs. But when they called in the doctor, he said no, it was worms.. His medicines brought on convulsions and she died. Ann insisted on an autopsy, which proved that it was inflamed lungs rather than worms that was the problem.

Seventeen years later, John Preston Kellogg would help finance the beginnings of a worldwide health reform movement that would, for many decades, treat people in better waysways outlined in the Spirit of Prophecy. And eventually two of his sons would make Battle Creek world famous, and its health-care center an international landmark for natural healing.

Sources

• http://www.sdadefend.com/Ad-history/Alpha/alpha-2.htm

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15330834/john-preston-kellogg