Calhoun County MI Archives Biographies.....Kellogg, Will Keith April 7, 1860 - October 6, 1951
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Will Keith Kellogg, usually referred to as W. K. Kellogg was a U.S. 
industrialist in food manufacturing.

W.K. Kellogg started out selling brooms as a young businessman then moved to 
Battle Creek, Michigan to help his brother John Harvey Kellogg run the Battle 
Creek Sanitarium. There in one of the labs they produced the first flaked 
cereal. W.K. Kellogg saw this as a great business opportunity and wanted to 
keep the production of the product a secret, John Harvey disagreed and allowed 
anyone in the sanitarium to come see the flaking process. This allowed a fellow 
sanitarium guest, C. W. Post to see the process, thus inspiring him to start 
his own company, which became Post Cereals and later General Foods. C.W. Post 
then made his first million dollars off the sales of his new product; this 
upset W.K. Kellogg who then left the sanitarium to create his own company.

With his brother John Harvey Kellogg, he propagated eating cereals as healthy 
breakfast food, especially corn flakes. They started the Sanitas Food Company 
to produce their whole grain cereals around 1897. A standard breakfast then was 
eggs and meat eaten by the well off. The poor ate porridge, farina, gruel, and 
other boiled grains. John and Will eventually argued over the addition of sugar 
to the cereals. In 1906 he founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company 
which later became Kellogg Company. In 1930 Kellogg established the W. K. 
Kellogg Foundation. W.K. Kellogg saw the value of investing in a community. One 
of his more famous lines is "I will invest my money in people".

W.K. Kellogg was one of the first people to put nutrition labels on his foods. 
He also offered the first premium for kids to send in for.

During the depression, W.K. Kellogg extended his cereal plant to include 3 
shifts, each lasting 6 hours. This gave more people in Battle Creek the 
opportunity to work during that time.

W. K. Kellogg is recognized as the founder of Kellogg College, Oxford.

Kellogg had a long interest in Arabian horses. In 1925, Kellogg purchased 377 
acres for $250,000 in Pomona, California as the site of his Arabian Horse 
Ranch.In 1932, Kellogg donated the ranch, which had grown to 750 acres, to the 
University of California system. During World War II, the ranch was taken over 
by the U.S. War Department and was known as the Pomona Quartermaster Depot 
(Remount). In 1948 the ranch was transferred to the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture, and in 1949 it was deeded to the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Later 
in 1949, title to the then 813-acre ranch and the horses was passed to the 
State of California with the provision that the herd of Arabian horses must be 
maintained. The ranch became part of the Voorhis unit of what was then known as 
the California State Polytechnic College in San Luis Obispo. This became known 
as the Kellogg campus, and in 1966, it separated to form California State 
Polytechnic College Pomona (now California State Polytechnic University, 
Pomona).

Some of Kellogg's property near Battle Creek, Michigan was donated to Michigan 
State College and is now the Kellogg Biological Station.

Will Keith Kellogg died October 6, 1951 in Battle Creek, MI and was buried in 
Oak Hill Cemetery (Section A, Lot 4, Rt 4), Battle Creek, MI

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/calhoun/bios/kellogg19bs.txt

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