The Kelloggs Read online

  Young Dr. Kellogg focused most intently on the medical displays at the fair. One of them was a stunning painting unceremoniously hung behind the United States War Department’s specially constructed full-sized modern “military post” hospital ward. The picture was an eight feet by six feet portrait of surgeon Samuel Gross by the Philadelphia Realist painter Thomas Eakins.54 Now considered an American masterpiece, it is mandatory to note the Exhibition’s Art Gallery committee rejected The Gross Clinic on the grounds that Eakins’s vivid image of a surgical operation was too gory and offensive for the average fairgoer.55 Other “health exhibits” John passed by included those sponsored by the manufacturers of “Pine Tree Tar Cordial,” a patented panacea for coughs, colds, consumption, and sore throats, equipment manufacturers displaying the finest microscopes from Germany, surgical instruments made of British steel, the newest artificial legs, hernia belts and other prosthetics, and others demonstrating a huge array of allopathic, botanical, and homeopathic medical products.

  The U.S. Post Hospital exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition (“World’s Fair”) of 1876 in Philadelphia Credit 23

  John spent most of his time, however, taking notes at an elaborate demonstration booth mounted by the G. M. Zander Medico-Gymnastic Company of Stockholm. Gustav Zander was a doctor and a gymnastics teacher at both the University of Stockholm and at his own medico-gymnastic institute. The Zander Company designed and sold all types of exercise machines “by means of which the several muscles, tendons, and ligaments of the body can, in due sequence, be brought into play, so gradually and so delicately as to render the exercise perfectly safe, even for the most confirmed invalid, or the most delicate child.”56 One of Dr. Zander’s most popular machines was a leather-clad cylinder equipped with a saddle, which was set upon a contraption with wooden legs and springs. The device essentially mimicked the bucking and cantering of a horse with none of the hassles of tending to a live beast. After a trip to Sweden in 1883, and again in 1886, Dr. Kellogg purchased several of Zander’s “exercise machines” to equip his gymnasium at the San, which he tinkered with and redesigned for American use.57

  —

  BACK IN BATTLE CREEK, Ann Janette Kellogg glowed with pride over John’s adventures on the busy wards of Bellevue Hospital. As exciting as the young medico’s exploits were for the majority of the Kellogg family, however, the fifteen-year-old Will silently ground his teeth in resentment over his mother’s favoritism. Unfortunately, Ann Janette dispensed maternal nourishment in as sparing a manner as Bumble the Beadle distributed bowls of gruel to Oliver Twist. It was, as one family friend noted, a home where “everything was so serious.” Her style of mothering was not the best fit for a child who was so in need of affection. One of the Kellogg children recalled as an adult, “If we could get Mother to laugh, we could get anything out of her, but it was not very easy to get her to laugh.”58 Uriah Smith, a close friend of the family, described her as remarkable, vigorous, and indomitable, “a glance from her piercing eyes was sufficient to bring the most rebellious child speedily to terms…some might have mistaken her reticence and dignity of character and bearing for coldness of disposition, but those who came near to her knew her to be an uncommonly generous and exceedingly tender-hearted person.”59 Will’s authorized biographer Horace Powell described her more succinctly, “Unfortunately for young Will, Ann Janette Kellogg was not a mother who wasted love.”60

  Resigned to toiling away as the traveling salesman for John Preston’s broom works, Will’s life consisted of long, dusty train trips, nights spent sleeping in bedbug-ridden cheap hotels, and horrendous meals gobbled in haste before jumping onto the next train. The roadwork was so unattractive and lonely that he longed to return to making brooms in Battle Creek and living in his cold but competent mother’s home.

  At sixteen, Will temporarily moved to nearby Kalamazoo to help out at his half-brother Albert’s broom firm, which Albert had all but run into the ground long before Will arrived. The little brother attempted to teach his older sibling how to recognize when the broomcorn jobbers were foisting off inferior materials. He gave him tips on inspecting each three-hundred-pound bale for “size, straightness, color,” and double-checking the quality by scraping the “seed from the brush by drawing it through a hoe with comb-like teeth, mounted on a bench.” Displaying a patience far beyond his youth, Will sat for hours in Albert’s shop, “with a ball of string on the floor between his feet as he wrapped the twine around and around the brush and tied each broom by hand” in order to insure every broom was well made and satisfactory to their discerning customers.61 Will even helped Albert organize a team of younger workers to perform these intensive labors so that the brothers could keep their hands clean and their heads focused on managing the shop.62 A disinterested Albert failed to see the point of all these broom-making lessons and, instead, let Will take on the responsibilities of running the business while he sat in the back office, laughing and chatting it up with friends or reading the newspapers.

  Will shook his head in disbelief at his brother’s behavior. He knew, from hard experience and his father’s demanding expectations, that one had to ignore the pain of the chaff settling in one’s eyes or the “fell of broomcorn itch on sweaty skin” and get the job done. It was during this awful, perspiration-ridden work that he first displayed his outsized talent for management. Indeed, these early examples of Will’s attention to every step of the manufacturing process, no matter what he was manufacturing, informed his entire career.

  Will’s strong streak of resentment finally bubbled over when Albert refused to pay the several weeks back wages he had earned. The business was so precarious that Albert offered to unload it to Will in lieu of monetary compensation. Instead, Will hoisted his heavy trunk onto Albert’s front porch and demanded room and board with his half-sibling’s family until the bill was paid. Albert’s wife would have none of it and ordered him to pay the morose, prickly boy his money, with the stipulation that Will move back to Battle Creek and his father’s broom factory.63

  Will at age 18 or 19. A tintype taken in Dallas sometime between 1878 and 1879. Credit 24

  —

  OVERLAPPING WITH John’s return to Battle Creek was Will’s first big adventure away from Battle Creek. In December 1878, Will made a sojourn to Dallas, Texas, the home to a small but growing Seventh-day Adventist community. In the spring of that year, James White partnered with George H. King, an Adventist acolyte, to open a broom factory in Dallas. Brooms, Ellen White decreed, made for a cleaner and healthier house; a healthier house meant healthier parishioners honoring the bodies the Creator gave them. Consequently, broom manufacturing epitomized a somewhat symbolic sacrament to the Adventist health reform movement. Financially speaking, expanding the broom business beyond Michigan represented a significant windfall to the Adventist Church’s coffers.

  Six months into the venture, the Texas factory was on a direct path to bankruptcy. King wrote a letter begging Elder James for assistance. White replied by post advising Mr. King “to hire one of the Kellogg boys to show you how to make brooms.”64 A determined King entrained to Michigan and interviewed a number of young men from Battle Creek, including Will’s older, gentler brother, Preston Kellogg. By the end of the day, King had hired the best man for the job, the eighteen-year-old Will.

  Eager to make good in a venture he briefly fantasized about claiming for his own, Will was disappointed the second he stepped off the platform at the Dallas train station. In a diary he kept during this period of his life, Will confessed:

  I left in December when the weather was below zero and the ground covered with snow, and I had great expectations with reference to the wonderful climate of the South. The day after my arrival, what was known as a “Texas Norther” arrived and there were several inches of snow on the ground.65

  Will pined for the comfort and familiarity of Battle Creek, a place farther away in his mind than the thousand miles marked by the railway line between Michigan and Texas. While shivering in t
he unseasonably frigid Dallas weather, Will dutifully documented every cold he caught, the poorly heated room he rented with a colleague identified only as “Willson,” the infestations of bedbugs and fleas who kept him “company,” the makeshift meals he prepared for himself, and the lonely work he endured.

  In search of some sense of belonging and recreation, he joined Dallas’s Seventh-day Adventist community and began attending their church-sponsored activities. For example, on January 18, 1879, Will used the teenage slang of the day to record the fun he had at a church sing and splitting the bill for refreshments at the after party: “Had a fly time, all dutch.” Later that month, he attended church singing school, taught children at Sabbath school, and was even introduced to a young woman, identified only as “Miss Cole.”66

  Will (standing) and his roommate, “Willson,” while he was working at the King broom factory in Dallas, Texas, circa 1879 Credit 25

  Back to business, things were entirely another matter. In his diary, Will described the difficulties of working both in King’s factory and in the field where the broomcorn was grown. Like most teenaged boys on a job, Will complained about the incompetence of his boss. George King “does not act much like a man of business,” he griped, “he is fearful slow and don’t work any himself.”67 Will’s workdays began at dawn and lasted until well after dark. His health was not “robust,” he endured a number of dental problems and teeth extractions, and he appears rather gaunt in photographs taken of him at the time.68

  In late January, Will told his parents about a letter he received from James and Ellen White remarking on how pleased they were with his work. The Whites also announced an upcoming visit to Texas and hinted about plans to start another broom factory in Denison, about seventy-five miles north of Dallas. Displaying his lifelong sensitivity, on February 14, he told his parents about the day the Whites finally arrived in Dallas: “I worked at sorting [brooms] this forenoon and bunched and cleaned up this afternoon and labeled…Elder White and wife came from Denison this evening by team. Elder didn’t know me. He didn’t speak.” The following day, a Saturday Sabbath, Will ate breakfast, put on his best clothes, and went to church only to experience another slight: “Mrs. White preached this forenoon. She spoke to me after the meeting and so did the Elder. He didn’t know me. He spoke of me in the meeting and so did Mrs. White” (the emphasis in italics is Will’s).69

  In addition to these disappointments, Will hated the dirty, unkempt town of Dallas where “the sewers…all run out in the open air, some along the streets and some under the sidewalks.” “Down by the central market,” he reported in his diary, “there is a fearful stench comes up from under the sidewalk. I should think they would have the fever if they don’t clean up.”70 He was further irritated by King’s constant requests for money to help shore up his fledgling firm. Will complained on May 13, “King wanted me to sign a note. I wouldn’t.”71 By early August, it was clear that King’s firm was anything but and the workers revolted. “There has been a whole posse in after their pay,” Will wrote. “Sent to the Elder after some money last Monday but it didn’t come.”72

  Most of Mr. King’s broom-making workers were young men and regardless of the church they attended were bound to indulge in boisterous high jinks. One evening Will visited a flea-bitten animal circus, with “electric lights,” and on another he attended a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s warhorse operetta H.M.S. Pinafore. Such activities were sinful enough to cause his parents to shake their heads in disapproval. Matters only became worse after Will took charge of the payroll on August 11 and he scraped together $250 (roughly $6,120 in 2016) to pay the broom cutters a fraction of their owed wages. Before nightfall, many of them spent their newfound cash on liquor and fun. Will reported having to clean up after a fellow named Smith who “got into the jug last Friday night.” A few weeks later he complained that he “had a fearful time with Thom Alison. He was drunker than a fool. Came near having some trouble. Had to take some beer with him.” On September 10, these alcohol-related antics led to a formal reprimand from the church: “They had a meeting at the church today. Had my name up for treating some of the hands to beer. Also Bates for drinking it.” The churchly rebukes may have been well earned, considering Will’s diary confession of October 28: “Don’t feel very well today. We had a fearful time last night. I am going to swear off and am not going around any more.”73

  Hangover-induced repentances aside, Will’s shenanigans and the terrible working conditions worried Ann Janette back home: “Got a letter from Mother. She is afraid I will get killed or have the fever.”74 Apparently, Will’s Texas adventure proved intoxicating enough and he rarely, if ever, took a drink for the remainder of his long life even though he was hardly as temperance-minded as John Harvey and Ella Kellogg. Late in his life Will confessed to his grandson Norman Jr. that “Uncle Doc [John Harvey Kellogg] was death on alcohol….I have since learned that alcoholic beverages in moderation might make social occasions more enjoyable. It’s too late for me to start but I don’t object to those who do imbibe so long as they do it in moderation.”75

  There were, however, many other letters from Battle Creek that made Will’s Texas exodus far more tolerable. All year, Will engaged in a lengthy correspondence with “the girl next door,” Elmirah (Ella) Osborn Davis, the daughter of Obadiah Davis, the town’s grocer. On the days she received a missive from Will, Miss Davis promptly wrote back the news from Battle Creek. Her notes were cheerful and encouraging. Some of them were illustrated with drawings, which Will deemed “the bossiest of pictures…just splendid.”76 It was during this period when Will gave Ella his lifelong nickname for her, “Puss.”

  The pull to Michigan proved too strong and Will finally gave in to the homesickness for his family, familiar sights, and a stirring heart for Miss Davis. By November 29, 1879, Will Keith Kellogg was back in Battle Creek: “I hardly knew the girls [his sisters], they had grown so. Folks were all glad to see me and I to see them. I saw Puss and she made me go home with her.” He concluded his diary on the last day of the year, “Happy New Year is coming and the old one is going as fast as it can. Goodbye to 1879, also to this diary.”77

  —

  THE NEW YEAR, 1880, meant far more than a fond goodbye to his drudgery in Dallas and his diary; it welcomed three momentous moves that shaped the remainder of Will’s life. The first was his decision to enroll in the Parson’s Business College in Kalamazoo. No grove of academe, Parson’s was a for-profit institute offering three- to twelve-month courses in the basic skills needed to conduct a business. Tuition started at $28 (or $669 in 2016) for three months all the way to $75 (about $1,790 in 2016) “for the highly recommended 12-month program.” Will had little patience to sit through a year’s worth of lectures and lessons. Nor did he look forward to twelve months of commuting the twenty-mile distance between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek. Such rides took a fast horse about three hours to run but bridging the distance was mandatory because Will was not welcome to stay at his brother Albert’s home, and lodging in Kalamazoo was too prohibitive. Like many an impoverished student, Will was forced to commute to school and live with his parents. Consequently, he told William Parsons, “the big, red-headed Irishman” who ran the school, that he desired a thorough business education but he could not afford an entire year’s tuition acquiring it. Instead, the determined Will proposed an accelerated course over a period of ninety days. Impressed by Will’s evident resolve, Parsons replied, “You take this seat right next to my desk, work like hell, and any time you want to know something or to have more lessons piled upon you, just say the word.”78

  By the end of three months, Will qualified as a “bookkeeper and accountant.” The young man left Kalamazoo armed with an ornately handwritten certificate signed by Mr. Parsons and dated May 16, 1880, attesting that Will had completed a course in the “following branches of bookkeeping: Single and Double Entry, Wholesale and Retail, Manufacturing, Banking, Commercial Calculations, Business Correspondence, and making ou
t commercial papers, including deeds and mortgages.” Parsons also gave Will a strong endorsement letter, declaring “during his course of study he has always conducted himself as a gentleman and I can cheerfully recommend him to the business community.”79

  The second important pursuit was of Ella “Puss” Osborn Davis, a small woman, five-foot-four, and “not so much shy as absorbed in her work and thoughts.” Will’s frequent visits to the Davis home included chaperoned evenings of sitting and chatting on the front porch, playing games, and singing old hymns such as “Marching Through Georgia” in an out-of-tune voice, while Ella plunked them out on her father’s even more out-of-tune piano. Will’s crush of infatuation turned into love and in the autumn of 1880 he proposed marriage. The nuptials took place on November 3 at the Adventist Tabernacle Church. Flush with the $1,500 (or $35,800 in 2016) Will had squirreled away from his broom work, the couple made a down payment on a small home on Champion Street, close by the Kelloggs’ and the Davises’ family homes. One relative, who temporarily lived with Puss and Will Kellogg, described her as “a good housekeeper and her home and family meant everything to her…she wasn’t the kind who came and put her arms around you, but she did the necessary things for your comfort.”80 Ella would serve as Will’s supporting helpmeet for the next thirty-two years, even if he did not always have the time or inclination to show her the attention she craved.