Calhoun County MI Archives News.....Tragic fire destroyed early orphanage (Haskell Home) July 11, 2005 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Robin Ellis -- June 15, 2006, 2:48 pm Battle Creek Enquirer July 11, 2005 Tragic fire destroyed early orphanage Jim Richmond Much has been written, and made, of the fire that destroyed the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1902 and the heroic efforts of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg to raise funds for and rebuild the Sanitarium that is today the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center. More tragic, and less well known, is a fire seven years later that challenged Kellogg and the local Seventh-day Adventist Church took the lives of three young children and destroyed another of Battle Creek's early landmarks. — Jim Richmond What facility was called "the grandest institution in Battle Creek" and burned to the ground after reported factional differences within the Seventh-day Adventist Church involving Dr. John Harvey Kellogg? The Haskell Home for Orphans. Only 37 children were in the Haskell Home for Orphans on Hubbard Street when the north wing of the facility caught fire in the early morning hours of Feb. 5, 1909. Three children were trapped on the third floor and burned to death. Seven others escaped by jumping from upper-floor windows. The Haskell Home was on 117 acres just outside Battle Creek's northwest city limits owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Benevolent Association. The land had been purchased in 1891 from Tyler Austin, Henry H. Hubbard and Judge Benjamin Franklin Graves. (Graves was the first area resident to serve on the Michigan Supreme Court. Ann Street is also named after his wife.) The Haskell Home opened with much fanfare in 1894. It was operated by the Benevolent Association, of which Kellogg was president. Kellogg was described as the home's "godfather and guiding spirit." Caroline E. Haskell, a Sanitarium visitor from Chicago, donated $30,000 to build the orphanage, on condition it be named after her deceased husband. The Adventists had intended to name the home in memory of Elder James White. A newspaper article described the home as "the grandest institution in Battle Creek" with a dramatic Gothic style designed by local architect A.D. Ordway. The home was wood with brick veneer, and had a 14-foot wide by 12-foot high veranda around its west and south sides. Kellogg devised a system to ventilate the building. It had a gymnasium, school rooms, library, attic playrooms and an observatory that "overlooked Battle Creek and the Kalamazoo River valley." The orphanage could house up to 150 children. At its dedication on Jan. 26, 1894, Kellogg said the orphanage would "rear the children.... to give them such an education as to make them whole men and whole women. The girls as well as the boys will be taught trades." The orphanage had no debt, but depended on donations for its support. Within a few years, the Haskell Home was apparently in the middle of what were called "factional difficulties" within the Seventh-day Adventist Church and involving Kellogg. In September 1907, a newspaper story claimed some Adventist publications were urging people to withdraw their financial pledges for the home "owing to Dr. Kellogg's ungodliness. This has wrecked the home. Children have been removed, support withdrawn." After the fire, the Benevolent Association continued to operate the orphanage until 1922, on a much-reduced scale in what had been the power house and laundry. Mystery still surrounds how official records of the nearby Haskell Home Cemetery were lost and what happened to headstones marking where an estimated 50 people are buried, including the three young victims of the 1909 fire. A stone marker and cemetery plaque can be found on the northwest corner of the nearby Battle Creek Academy campus, where the original cemetery was located. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/calhoun/newspapers/tragicfi26gnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/mifiles/ File size: 4.3 Kb