Welcome to the Home Page of kellogg-geneaology.org. We Kelloggs have a common bond – almost all of us had to learn to embrace the rooster, explain, with incredulity, how to spell K-E-double L-O-double G; and reply, "yes, I am related to that Kellogg, but not closely"! I should introduce myself: my name is Glen Eugene Kellogg and I live in Ashland, Virginia. More importantly, I am the son of Gordon Henry Kellogg (1925-2008), who was the son of Harry Kellogg (1891-1954), who was the son of Ashley Tupper Kellogg (1860-1915), who was the son of Orson Kellogg (1827-1905), who was the son of William Kellogg (1790-1868), who was the son of Elijah Kellogg (1764-1839), who was the son of Deacon William Kellogg (1724-1770), who was the son of Stephen Kellogg (1695-1738), who was the son of Ensign Stephen Kellogg (1668-1722), who was the son of Lieutenant Joseph Kellogg (1626-1707), who was the son of Martin Kellogg (1595-1671), who was the son of Phillippe Kellogg, who was the son of Thomas and the grandson of Nicholas Kellogg. My particular branch of the Kellogg tree is pretty sparse, and has its roots in the Adirondacks, particularly Elizabethtown, Long Lake, Minerva and Old Forge, New York.

My father and his brother Harry (Jr.) grew up at Big Moose Lake, New York, in the Glenmore Hotel and its cottages, which was owned and operated by their father Harry and mother Gertrude. This hotel was infamous for being the site of the murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906, which was more than a decade before my grandfather bought the hotel. This murder, however, was the basis of the 1925 novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. The novel is considered a classic of American literature and was included on the Time list of the 100 best novels between 1923 and 2005. Dreiser, however, stayed at the Glenmore as he was researching the book, and my grandfather recounted (to my father) having seen him. All of this (historical) family drama has always been quite fascinating to me, and I decided to research it more as I approached retirement.

The first stop for anyone interested in Kellogg genealogy is, of course, Timothy Hopkins’ three volume masterpiece The Kelloggs in the Old World and the New, Sunset Press, San Francisco, California, 1903. As I found it on-line, in a rather marginal scanned copy, several thoughts crossed my mind. The first was, unsurprisingly, what a pain it is to not have a digital copy of such an important document. Secondly, I was seriously impressed by how much work Hopkins and his assistants went into producing this massive document without benefit of a computer or air travel. The third thought was, "hey, this looks a lot like an archaic simulation of a world-wide web page". Hopkins brilliantly organized his volumes by assigning numbers, i.e., tags, to each Kellogg, and indicated both forward searching with "+" links, and backward searching with "son of" and "dau. of" links. The challenge excited me: can I convert the Hopkins volumes into an publicly accessible, relevant, but most importantly, living web page? The fourth thought, however, was that this was going to be a monumentally large project with not only the tens of thousands of Kelloggs known to Hopkins, but supplemented with three or more Kellogg generations since. Clearly, I am going to need help!

Of course, there are many sources of genealogical data available on the internet, particularly through the subscription service offered by Ancestry.com, at Familysearch.org with somewhat less reliability but offered for free by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or with other genealogical community or commercial resources. After reviewing many family trees, especially on Ancestry, I came to the conclusion that many, if not most, are flawed, often ignoring information or contradictions on the very "Ancestry Person" page being developed. Most significant is that the information within is scattered: often even the lists of spouses or children are different on the various page versions for the same person.

The Kelloggs have an enormous advantage in genealogy over nearly all other families: we have the solid gold foundation of Hopkins' work to build upon. While his texts are certainly far from perfect, with numerous mistakes, many omissions and more than a few anachronisms, some pretty cringy, they suggest a template for the complete genealogy of the Kellogg family from the beginning up until the present. I have taken this template and adopted into the web site you are now visiting. In fact, I have tried, with my latter day updates, corrections and expansions, to maintain the format and style of Hopkins' books, even retaining many of its (less offensive) anachronisms in new pages.

System for Flexible and Unique Ancestor Tracking

However, in retrospect, the numerical system of Hopkins for identifying Kelloggs is pretty unworkable; if someone got missed, the entire system is compromised. How do you expand it in a anon-arbitrary way? Also, the numbers give little information on their own other than to vaguely approximate the generation of the numbered individual. Lastly, I disagree that Phillippe is the "first" Kellogg. That distinction should belong to Nicholas. My system, used here, is that Nicholas is <1>, his children, William and Thomas are <1.2a> and <1.2b>, respectively. The next generation, following Thomas' tree, is Phillippe <1.2b.3a>, followed by Phillippe's children, Thomas <1.2b.3a.4a>, Annis <1.2b.3a.4b>, Robert <1.2b.3a.4c>, Mary <1.2b.3a.4d>, Prudence <1.2b.3a.4e>, Martyn <1.2b.3a.4f>, Nathaniel <1.2b.3a.4g>, John <1.2b.3a.4h>, Jane <1.2b.3a.4i> and Rachel <1.2b.3a.4j>. Thomas' children continue the sequence as <1.2b.3a.4a.5?>, while Martyn's children continue the sequence as <1.2b.3a.4f.5?>, etc. My unique identifier is <1.2b.3a.4f.5c.6j.7a.8d.9e.10c.11f.12f.13b.14a.15a>. Thus, each Kellogg has a unique indentiifier in a system that is rational and infinitely expandable. With these identifiers it is simple to find the relationship between any two individuals in the family. Frank Billings Kellogg (1856-1937), the senator from Minnesota, U.S. Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is <1.2b.3a.4f.5c.6j.7a.8d.9e.10c.11d.12b>, and is thus my first cousin thrice removed.

Data Organization

Using this system has another useful outcome: it also provides a rational method to organize the voluminous data produced. Each generation corresponds to a subdirectory level; e.g., the page for me is found at: https://kellogg-genealogy.org/g1/g2b/g3a/g4f/g5c/g6j/g7a/g8d/g9e/g10c/g11f/g12f/g13b/g14a/g15a/15a.html. Similarly, and adapting the convention established by Hopkins to this web project, each Kellogg (male or female) that has children has his/her own web page, i.e., an html file. Again, by Hopkins' definition, a Kellogg must have a Kellogg surname, children of the marriages of Kellogg women (who will not have Kellogg surnames) are assigned unique identifiers, but not their own web pages.

Another advantage, certainly, is that web pages can support and display photographs, maps, and many kinds of other information and media. Thus, each Kellogg that has children also has his/her own associated media repository, which is an associated subdirectory within that person's subdirectory.