1834

John Preston Kellogg and Mary Ann Dickinson moved from Hadley Massachusetts where the Kellogg family lived for two-hundred years. The Kellogg family and their young sons, Merritt and Smith, headed to the territory of Michigan Territory next to an old Hadley neighbor, Lansing Dickinson, near present day town of Flint, Michigan on a farm, 320 acres.

1841

Ann Stanley is paid to care for the Kellogg children and run the household during Mary Kellogg’s illness. Mary requests that John keeps Ann on after Mary’s death. Mary Kellogg dies in the autumn of the year.

1842

March. Ann Stanley marries John Preston. They moved to a 160 acre farm in Tyrone, Livingston County. Becoming charter members of the Hartland Center Congregational Church, John Preston is ordained an elder. They also became active abolitionists and helped pass fugitive slaves on toward the Canadian border to freedom.”

1852

February 26, John Harvey Kellogg is born.

1852

Summer of 1852. A neighbor and believer since the Millerite era, Mr M E Cornell, encourages the Kellogg family to attend a lecture series by Joseph Bates. John-Preston and Anne Kellogg embrace the new teachings of Adventism.

1853

The Kelloggs sell their farm and moved to Jackson County where John-Preston resumes the old family trade of broom making operating a small store and factory. He uses the proceeds from the sale of the farm to finance part of the moving of the Adventist “Review and Herald” Publishing Plant from Rochester, New York, to the little-known community of Battle Creek, Michigan.

1861

John Harvey Kellogg begins formal schooling at the age of nine years of age and is a voracious reader. He learns to play the organ, piano, and violin.

1863

June. Ellen White, the Adventist Prophetess, directs the infant church’s attention to the Christian’s moral duty to study and observe basic health laws. Mrs White begins to speak and write extensively on healthful living based on the health advocates of the century.

1864

James White visits the Kellogg's home as President of the Seventh Day Adventist Publishing Association. He invites young John-Harvey Kellogg to learn the printing trade at the Review and Herald Press. During this apprenticeship John-Harvey becomes like a son to John and Ellen White. He lives in their home for months at a time, helping Pastor James White in his writing and editorial work.

1866

In response to the urging of Ellen White to establish an institution which could care for the sick, the Western Health Reform Institute opens. Major support comes from John Preston Kellogg, the largest stockholder.

1868

John Harvey Kellogg takes a teaching position in a one room school house in Hastings, Michigan. He contracts a lung disease and returns to Battle Creek working part-time. He enrolls in a teachers’ training course at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti.

1872

Autumn. John is summoned for a family council meeting in Battle Creek. The Whites are concerned over the six-year old Western Health Reform Institute and persuade his brother, Merritt Kellogg, to return from California to help out. Merritt and John Harvey Kellogg, the two White sons, Edson and Willie, and Jennie Trembley, are sent to the Trall School in Florence Heights, New Jersey for training.

1873

John Harvey returns home and serves as editorial assistant for the Health Reformer. He learns shorthand and serves as secretary for business meetings. James White recognizes the need for Adventists to secure a sound education in medicine and finances John-Harvey’s medical education at Bellevue Hospital Medical School in New York where he graduates.

1874

John Harvey Kellogg publishes his first major book advocating a vegetarian diet—Proper Diet for Man.

1875-1878

John Harvey Kellogg engages in medical study, reading English, French, and German publications and invests in a large personal medical library. He joins medical associations and forms one in Battle Creek. Unlike past health care reformers, he does not attack and discredit medical professionals; he sets his sights on conversion of physicians as his goal.

1876

In the spring he arranges an exhibit of health and temperance literature at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. He travels to Wilmington Delaware where he spends the summer preparing health tracts and books. The directors of the troubled Health Reform Institute persuaded John Harvey to take over as physician-in-chief. He does on the condition of having a free hand in restructuring the institute on a rational and scientific basis.

1877

Dr JH Kellogg changes the institute’s name to the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

The Sanitarium Food Company, a subsidiary of the Sanitarium, begins and sells whole grain products and cooked cereals.

1878

Battle Creek Sanitarium constructs a five-story building. The publication The Health Reformer, changes its name to Good Health. JHK remains the editor and the magazine is transferred to the Sanitarium from the Adventist church.

1879

JHK marries Miss Ella Eaton of Alfred Center, New York on February 22nd.

1880

John Harvey Kellogg publishes his most widely circulated book, The Home Handbook of Domestic Hygiene and Rational Medicine, which contains more than 1,600 pages with lavish illustrations.

William Keith Kellogg, John Harvey’s younger brother, becomes his secretary, personal accountant, and business manager at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

1881

John Harvey publishes his first of seven textbooks on anatomy, physiology, and hygiene and assumes the responsibility of caring for his mother and financing the education of his brothers and sisters who remain at home.

1882

For nearly 60 years, speaking before hundreds of thousands of Americans, John Harvey Kellogg makes extensive use of the lecture platform to promote “biologic living.” Convinced that Adventist ministers have lost interest in health reform, he speaks at church-camp meetings from coast to coast at his own expense. Gradually, large numbers of Adventist young people began to come to Battle Creek to train for medical service.

1883

Dr John Harvey Kellogg has an extended visit in Europe, with his wife and sister, Clara, attending leading medical institutions to observe new medical apparatus and improved surgical methods. He spends a month at the world center of medical knowledge, Vienna, Austria. In Stockholm he investigates exercise equipment and programs. He learns of the first experimental work in radium therapy and introduces the innovation. He discovers the use of the electro-cardiograph in Berlin, and immediately has one sent to the Sanitarium.

1886

Dr W J Fairfield formally makes charges of unethical conduct against Kellogg with the Calhoun County Medical Association based on advertising of services and generally attacking the medical profession. Kellogg is acquitted of the charges and two years later is elected president of the association.

1886-1889

Dr Kellogg studies for five months at St Thomas and St Bartholomew in London, and observes Dr Theodor Billroth, in Vienna, the founder of modern gastric surgery and takes instruction under Billroth’s first assistant, Anton Wolfler. He also works for several weeks with Dr Horace T Hanks, a leading NY gynecological surgeon. He observes Dr Thomas Emmet who perfects major surgical techniques used in repairing injuries resulting from childbirth.

1989

JHK travels to Birmingham, England, and spends almost five months surgically assisting Dr Lawson Tait, a specialist in abdominal and gynecological surgery. Visiting London, he observes the surgeons at Good Samaritan Hospital including Joseph Lister M.D.

The Sanitarium Food Company starts a separate factory to manufacture its food products. The best selling products are granola and a warm grain beverage.

1890

John-Harvey realizes the need for an orphanage, since the Kelloggs now have forty additional homeless children living with them.

1892

John Harvey Kellogg accepts engagements in the Chautauqua series. By 1989, he receives more request than he can possible accept. The Chautauqua series coincided with the Sanitarium’s busiest period.

1893

John Harvey Kellogg establishes and becomes President of the Seventh-Day Adventists Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association which establishes thirty new sanitariums, 12 vegetarian restaurants, and a variety of urban medical missions designed to aid the poor and unemployed. He also helps to establish sanitariums in Mexico, England, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland. He makes heavy contributions to the MMBA from the profits of his food company and spends about half his time attending meetings of sanitarium boards, performing surgery, giving advices on treatment of patients, and in the construction of buildings worldwide.

Kellogg opens a Chicago branch of the Sanitarium on May 1, 1983, with four workers, in time for the Worlds Fair “Columbian Exhibition” and in the later part of June opens the Medical Mission in Chicago on West Van Buren Street with a large gift of $40,000 from Francis and Henry Wessel. By 1898 there are over 200 workers. The Chicago Medical Mission opens in the basement of the Custom Place House providing three major types of service: 1) a medical dispensary, 2) free baths, and 3) a free laundry. During a single month the mission provides 2,116 free baths, free laundry to 1, 725 persons, and prescriptions for 199 persons. It dresses 427 wounds, and gives out 2,942 used articles of clothing. Visiting nurses from the Battle Creek Nursing School come to get clinical experience. During the first year of the mission’s existence, the visiting nurses make 9,000 free home calls.

William S Sadler suggests that food sales would increase rapidly if they could market samples of Sanitarium food products in retail stores. The doctor approves of a plan for William S Sadler to conduct a sample campaign in Michigan City which is successful. The Sanitarium directors refuse to vote funds to expand despite the success in the marketing test.  Therefore, John Harvey decides to launch an independent company, Sanitas Food Company. It produces new foods such as flaked cereal and “vegetable” meats.” John Harvey delegates more and more responsibility to his younger brother, William Keith and gives him one-quarter of the profits. This company becomes to primary source of income that fund the future Chicago Medical Mission.

1894

The Haskell Home for Orphans in Battle Creek is dedicated on January 25. During this period the Home shelters 150-200 children and places more than 500 orphans in foster homes. The home remains opened until 1921.

John Harvey Kellogg sends William S Sadler to Moody Bible Institute for training in evangelistic techniques.

May 31. A new cereal flake is perfected—Granose Flakes, which results in a patent. John Harvey imposes restraints on advertising because of the medical community’s limits.

1895

William S Sadler is appointed Secretary of the Chicago Medical Mission activities.

The Battle Creek Sanitarium and the Medical Mission Benevolent Association jointly start the American Medical Missionary College. Clinical work is done at the Chicago Medical Mission and in Battle Creek. The AMMC Settlement Building is purchased some distance south of the main mission in a working class neighborhood. It serves as a combination dormitory, classroom, and social settlement house. It becomes the headquarters of the mission’s Visiting Nurse Service and the other programs including: a free kindergarten and day nursery for working mother’s, a cooking school, classes in sewing and manual training, health lectures for adults and children, women’s club, a newsboy’s reading room, a placement service for orphans and reclaimed prostitutes, jobs for former alcoholics, and a maternity home for runaway unmarried mothers.

Life Boat Rescue Services are established. “Each evening pairs of mature nurses left the Settlement House to work among Chicago’s streetwalkers, who they encourage to turn from lives of prostitution.”

John Harvey Kellogg presents a paper on biologic living at the Pan-American Medical Congress in Toronto.

Admiral A P Niblack accepts many of Kellogg’s idea and proceeds to introduce some of them at Annapolis Naval Academy. He indicates at a later time that the Naval Academy owes its entire program of physical training to John-Harvey Kellogg.

1896

John Harvey Kellogg addresses the New York Academy of Medicine.

The Chicago Medical Mission purchases an old church to provide sleeping quarters and meals for 300-400. The Home provides work for the men such as weaving rugs or making brooms. The free baths, laundry and dispensary moves to the home.

1897

The Sanitarium’s charter expires and reorganizes as the Michigan Sanitarium and Benevolent Association, a non-profit corporation. All members sign a declaration of principles, and agree that the work of the sanitarium should be “of an undenominational, unsectarian, humanitarian, and philanthropic in nature.” The Sanitarium is no longer under control of the Adventist church. The old stockholders can nominate one person for membership in the new org, so a large number of Seventh-Day Adventists ministers become members of the new Association.

1898

The Life Boat Mission opens on 15 Mar 1898, at 436 State Street with John Callahan as director. It is the only activity that carries the Seventh Day Adventist label. Kellogg authorizes Sadler to publish the Life Boat Magazine. At its peak it publishes more than 200,000 copies per issue.

Dr. Kellogg starts the Battle Creek Sanitarium Food Company on White Street. In 1902, the name changes to the Battle Creek Sanitarium and Health Food Company.

In June, Will and Lena Sadler and Thomas Mackey spend a week in Sparta, Wisconsin, lecturing to an Adventist Missionary Camp. Dr. Holden and Sister Black return from the Chautauqua Assembly at Marinette, Wis., where they assist in the work of the School of Health.

Dr John Harvey Kellogg goes to the Pacific Coast and Mexico.

Lena Sadler is in charge of the Life Boat Rescue Service and William S Sadler is Secretary of the Chicago Medical Missionary Training School, both at 1926 Wabash Ave. April 1898. A new workingman’s home, a former army barrack, is located at 1339 State Street, having four stories and a number of private rooms.

Lena Sadler heads up the program at the women’s jail.

“The gospel meetings at the Maternity Home are growing more and more interesting. The meetings are being conducted by Sisters Sadler and Callahan.”

It is reported in the Life Boat Magazine that there are over 350 charitable organizations in Chicago serving the poor.

A Medical Missionary Convention is held on Dec 17-19 in Chicago and is attended by 15 conference presidents. The new Medical Missionary Training School has an enrollment of 150.

1899

William S Sadler is placed in charge of the Life Boat Rescue Mission until October when Thomas Mackey is placed in charge .

William S Sadler conducts studies on “Christ as a personal worker.” He also pays a visit to Peoria, Illinois, speaking to the YMCA and various churches.”

Twenty-seven Medical Missions and Benevolent Associations now exist outside of Chicago.

1900

A complete description of the services of the Chicago Mission is offered in The Life Boat, August 1900 edition, Vol 3 No 6.

William S Sadler pays a short visit to Omaha Nebraska and Denver Colorado.

Misses Langley, (Anna B) Kellogg, and Blickenderfer, all at one time members of our graduate nurses' settlement, in Chicago, take a special course for graduate nurses at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

1901

John Harvey Kellogg publishes Rational Hydrotherapy, a result of twenty-seven years of research. A book principally for physicians, it is recognized as the single most important treatise on the subject. As late as 1960, the Mayo Clinic still reports using it.

The Chicago Medical Mission is supported by private donations. Only one-tenth of The Chicago Medical Mission is support by Adventists donors, the rest comes from sale of the Life Boat Magazine and private contributions.

Church leaders move Battle Creek College to Berrien Springs, Michigan, taking away the part-time young labor workforce at the Sanitarium of pre-medical students.

William and Lena Sadler move to San Francisco Bay Area to study medicine at Cooper Medical College, Clay and Webster Streets in San Francisco. Lena Sadler’s uncle, Dr Merritt Kellogg, a Seventh Day Adventist doctor resides in the Bay Area. The funding of the Chicago Medical Mission begins to decline forcing Dr Kellogg to contribute increasing share of the costs from his personal income from food manufacturing.

1902

On February 18, 1902 a fire destroys the entire main building, charity hospital, and several adjoining buildings of the Sanitarium. On May 12, 1902, ten thousand people gathered for an elaborate cornerstone-laying ceremony. The Sanitarium applies to the city for exemption from property taxes. Even though wealthy and famous people frequented the facility, the San opens the books to the city government to show the modest salaries that all workers from Dr Kellogg down to the helpers have received. The investigators are surprised by the number of charity cases treated at the San.

Ten months after the Sanitarium fire, the church’s giant Battle Creek publishing house burns to the ground. Most Adventists see the two calamities as divine judgment. With the move of Battle Creek College and the two fires, the decentralization of Adventism in Battle Creek had begun.

John-Harvey travels to Europe.

1903

May 31: The new Battle Creek Sanitarium is finished. Many Adventists think that Battle Creek is a dangerous place for young Adventists, and fear that their children might lose faith in the inspiration of Ellen White.

John Harvey Kellogg loses the patent on flaked cereal foods. John Harvey begins to believe that he might as well sell some of his food creations to others for a lump sum, because if he does not, ‘they will pirate them anyhow.’

Will and Lena Sadler return from San Francisco, on December 14th to continue their medical studies at the American Medical Missionary College in Chicago and work part-time in the Chicago Medical Mission as their studies will permit.

William S Sadler speaks at the West Michigan Young People’s Convention held in Battle Creek on December 31, 1903, “…taking for his text, "Today, if ye will hear His voice. The need of a definite consecration was most fittingly emphasized. The response was hearty. About one hundred and fifty sought victory in power over sin. Many consecrated their lives for full service.” On New Years Day, the delegates are taken to the Haskell Home (for orphans), cordially invited to the home of Mr and Mrs J H Kellogg, to the American Missionary College, and Battle Creek Sanitarium. They conclude with vespers in the gymnasium and a talk by Dr John Harvey Kellogg.

1904

A property of 160 acres is donated by Mr Peddicord in La Salle County, about 80 miles from Chicago and is used to grow fruits and vegetables for the Chicago Mission.

Through the donation of Mr C B Kimball, the Hinsdale Sanitarium property is obtained.

The Sadlers take a trip abroad. They visit Germany among other countries.

1905

Kellogg confides to an old associate that he anticipated the probability of an eventual break between himself and the church fifteen years earlier and that he had been preparing for the possibility for the previous ten years. For that reason, he wrote, he had insisted on maintaining the sanitarium as a “private, distinct, independent corporation.”

The doctor contracts for some of his sanitarium associates to present twenty-eight schools of health at various Chautauqua assemblies during the 1905 season.

1906

John Harvey Kellogg organizes the American Medical Missionary Board and endows it with five thousand shares of the Toasted Corn Flake Company stock and commissions it to carry out in a completely nonsectarian way the activities formerly sponsored by the Seventh-Day Adventist Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association. The AMMB finances the failing publication of “Good Health.” The AMMB sponsors the annual Medical Missionary Conference at the Sanitarium to encourage foreign medical missions among evangelical denominations.

The boom in prepared breakfast cereals provided sufficient funds to complete the financing of the new Sanitarium.

Believing that the restrains that John Harvey Kellogg placed on advertising were limiting sales, William Keith Kellogg persuades his brother to transfer his rights to produce Corn Flakes to an independent company. The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company is founded with financial help from C D Bolin. William Keith is the company’s president and CEO. Will insists that his brother, John Harvey, receive generous compensation in the form of company stock, on the stipulation that John Harvey would have no part in the management of the company. William Keith Kellogg puts his signature across the front of every box of toasted flakes.

William S Sadler is secretary-general of the faculty of the Hinsdale Sanitarium Medical Missionary Training School, which starts its second annual course of study. The school has 450 hours devoted to Bible doctrine and the study of the Third Angel’s Message. Diplomas from this school are recognized by all states for the practice of nursing. The Sanitarium is located in the midst of sixteen acres of woods in Hinsdale, Illinois.

1907

John Harvey Kellogg travels with Dr James T Case to St. Petersburg, Russia to observe the experiments of the Russian psychologist, Pavlov.

John Harvey Kellogg is expelled from the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

1908

Work is completed on the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company on Porter Street in Battle Creek with William Keith Kellogg as CEO.

John Harvey Kellogg changes the name of the Sanitas Food Company to The Kellogg Food Company in July 1908. He also leases the entire plant, machinery, goodwill, and business of the Battle Creek Sanitarium Good Food Company, thus bringing all the food products with which John Harvey is associated with, into one organization. He undermines his brother’s company by marketing the Kellogg Toasted Wheat Flakes in Chicago and New York.

1910

After five years of agitation regarding the tax exempt status of the Sanitarium, the city agrees to a compromise. John Harvey Kellogg is a born publicist and offers to build branches of the Sanitarium in other cities on the east coast. The local city economy benefits greatly from the Sanitarium and the matter is settled. Famous guests at the Sanitarium make the press. Clergy and local public school teachers are granted special low rates at the San.

William Keith Kellogg sues his brother, John Harvey Kellogg on August 11, 1910, in Calhoun County Circuit Court to have his brother enjoined “from using the name “Kellogg” either in a corporate name or as a descriptive name of a food. In 1911 they settle out of court with an agreement for the old Sanitas Food Company to not to use the “Kellogg” name on any package or box.

Dr Lena K Sadler and William S Sadler are guests of the Battle Creek Sanitarium upon their visit to the Medical Missionary Conference. Lena is actively engaged in medical work of a philanthropic character with her husband W S Sadler.

1911

John Harvey Kellogg returns to Europe. He again visits Welfler, in Vienna and stops in Bern, Switzerland, Paris. In London he studies with Sir Arbuthnot Lane, a gastrointestinal surgeon, and in Berlin at the center of renal surgery.

Dr William S Sadler MD also travels to Europe from September 1 to December 15th of the same year and meets noted physicians in surgery and psychiatry.

Drs James T and Helena Case and their child sail for Europe on 28 Sept 1911 from New York on the 18th instant by the Kaiser Wilhelm of the Hamburg line. They stop at the Isle of Wight, which is the home of Mrs. Case’s parents. Dr Case visits the great X-ray specialists in Europe and gathers all the available knowledge concerning recent developments in the line of the Roentgen ray.

President William H Taft, President of the United States, pays his first visit Battle Creek Sanitarium on 22 Sep 1911. President Taft speaks on “Reciprocity” to 20,000 people from a platform erected on campus.

Dr James T Case, former secretary of Dr J H Kellogg, gives an exhibit on X-ray to visiting surgeons.

1913

Autumn. The Chicago Medical Mission dispensary closes its doors.

William S Sadler is a speaker on the program for the Medical Department of the Seventh Day Adventist General Conference. Sadler is speaking on “Psychotherapy.”.

1915

Pressured by Dr Kellogg, the physicians and dentists of agree to provide free medical and dental examinations as part of the Battle Creek public school program.

John Harvey Kellogg changes the name of his bran product to Kellogg’s Sterilized Bran, claiming the product was new and was not in the 1911 agreement. In autumn, William Keith manufactures Kellogg’s Toasted Bran Flakes, Kellogg’s Flaked Bran, and Kellogg’s Bran.

1916

Battle Creek celebrates a Golden Jubilee. “On the evening of the first day of the celebration a two-mile-long torchlight parade wound through the heart of battle Creek. It includes seven bands, twenty-three floats, and fifty decorated automobiles. An extensive fireworks display ends the evening with William Jennings Bryan delivering the major address.

John Harvey Kellogg sues his brother William Keith Kellogg over the “wrongful use of the name “Kellogg.” William Keith wins right to use the Kellogg name on May 15, 1917. John Harvey Kellogg appeals to the Michigan Supreme Court.

1918

Dr James T Case joins the Army Medical Corps with the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe.

Dr John Harvey Kellogg contracts a serious respiratory illness and is confined in Florida.

1920

Ella Eaton Kellogg, wife of John Harvey dies. She remains a Baptist until her death and John Harvey constructs a chapel of her faith a few blocks from the Sanitarium to honor her memory.

On December 21, 1920, the Michigan Supreme Court rules that Dr Kellogg should have acted in 1907 when he was an officer and large shareholder. The court gave William Keith Kellogg the exclusive right to the trade name “Kellogg” and the right to collect all profits from the past infringement. W K Kellogg waives the right to damages. He is awarded the cost of legal fees which amounts to $225,000.

1921

John Harvey Kellogg changes the name of his food company to the “Battle Creek Food Company.” The company posts a 20 to 30 percent dividend on outstanding stock during 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1929.

1930

Glenn Curtiss, a pioneer aircraft manufacturer, builds a large Florida County Hotel with 14 acres of land. He donates it to John Harvey Kellogg with the stipulation that it remains a non-profit institution and is kept open at least six months of the year. John Harvey Kellogg spends his most of his time in Florida at the new Miami-Battle Creek Sanitarium.

1943

John Harvey Kellogg dies at the age of 91 on 14 Dec 1943 at his home.