carolyn kellogg

Let’s see if I can get this right.

My great-grandfather was George Aaron Kellogg (I think — I might be missing a great). Although he was unmarried in 1903, the year that The Kelloggs in the Old World and the New was published — a copy of which shares this room with me in Florida — George Aaron would get married and father my grandfather and his brother Martin. (Either that, or father their father). I knew Martin as great Uncle Mart, who showed up for a few holidays in my childhood as a kind of semi-welcome guest — he was estranged from his son, and everyone seemed to side with the son, who I don’t think I’ve ever met. Anyway, Uncle Mart was kind to me, and my grandmother and aunts and uncles remarked upon this kindness, as he was known as kind of a prick, and a misogynist to boot. Either because I was the only one who didn’t judge him, or because I liked art and he painted portraits, he thought I was OK. He sent me art supplies for years.

I didn’t know my grandfather so much. He died when I was two.

But anyway, my grandfather’s father, also great-uncle Mart’s father, George — his dad was Aaron Kellogg. Aaron, born 1795 in Connecticut, was the son of Thomas Wright Kellogg of Vernon Connecticut, born 1770.

Thomas Wright, according to The Kelloggs in the Old World and the New:

Resided on the family homstead in Vernon; held various sworn offices; was Justice of the Peace; when he set off for his bride, he rode one horse and led another on which she returned. The journey of forty miles to Glastonbury was made in a single day.

But we aren’t going down yet. Thomas and his wife (Mary Hubbard, with her own horse) will have to wait for another day.

Thomas’ dad was the Reverend Ebenezer Kellogg, born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1737. He and his wife Hannah had five surviving children, of which Thomas was the fourth, senior only to sister Eunice, which I imagine was a damnable name even in 1773 when she received it.

Thomas’s eldest brother was named for his daddy, Ebenezer (yeah, not much better than Eunice). Ebenezer Junior, born in 1764, would be my great-great-great-great uncle (I think; add greats as needed).

Ebenezer Jr., as we shall call him, had a pretty good life. He had three wives, one of whom was an Olmsted, a Connecticut Olmsted, just like that Central Park guy (give me enough time, and a couple more genealogy books…). Anyway, I figure that Ebenezer was a pretty happy dude, with or without those two terms he served in the state legislature: his first kid was born when he was 25; his last, when he was 48. That was a pretty good run for the 18th century in New England, and seven of his children lived to adulthood. The one I’m most concerned with is Allyn. Deacon Allyn had two sons, each of whom left a pamphlet in his wake, which lapped up on the shores of this room in Florida.

Allyn Stanley Kellogg, the eldest son of Ebenezer Jr., is commemorated in a historical address to the Church of Christ in Vernon, CT. It is an incredibly boring speech about the formation of the church, people wanting to not have to walk clear across town in the dead of winter. One hundred and eight — a significant bloc at the time — petitioned for a new church closer to home, causing a rift that was also an evolution. Location, location.

More interestingly, Martin (a name that would be passed down, and across), was born in 1828. I have lost track but I believe this Martin Kellogg was a second cousin several times removed. I’m not a descendant of Martin — he and his wife Louisa came close, twice, but neither baby survived. But we have something in common — we both moved from New England to California. Martin trained in seminary and at Yale, and wound up, in 1855, being sent to preside over a church in a place called Grass Valley; California had been a state for just five years. By 1860, Martin was teaching Latin and math at the College of California; it merged with the University of California and he became a professor of Latin and Greek from 1869 to 1894, then served in other positions. For three years beginning in 1890, my several-times-removed-second-cousin Martin was the acting president, then for another six years, was the formally appointed president. So let’s just say that clearly: cousin Martin was the president of the University of California, meaning Berkeley, from 1890-1899.

The pamphlet from his 1903 memorial is beside me now. A Professor Rising found an old essay that Martin had contributed, in his youth, to the Overland Monthly. Martin Kellogg wrote:

In a quiet town in New England is a farm that used to be my earthly paradise. My own father’s place was pleasant in its way, but it called for a little too much work from the time when a boy could ride a horse to plow out corn or follow the hay-cart with a rake. My grandfather’s farm, on the contrary, was a place for infinite leisure and sport. The standing invitation he gave was to ‘come down and do up the mischief.’

My cousin Martin was mischievous! Well, it runs in the family. Later on, a fellow named Columbus Barlett eulogized:

The love of the State for its University, not as an ideal sentiment, but as an appreciation of its power for good, of its ennobling influence upon the lives of the men and women who throng its halls as the creation of good citizens, honors the memory of man far more than graven stone or marble mausoleum. And as one who as been chief worker toward this end, the name of Dr. Martin Kellogg will always be held in grateful and loving memory by every Californian.

And so we remember not-all-that-distant-cousin Martin Kellogg, one of the first presidents of Berkeley. Does nepotism count for anything these days?