Will Keith Kellogg
Industrialist who founded Kellogg Company and Kellogg Foundation.
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Will Keith Kellogg was an American industrialist who founded the Kellogg Company, a major breakfast cereal manufacturer.[1] Through a $66-million gift in 1934, Kellogg established the Kellogg Foundation.[2]
Last updated 2026-10-07 from the source article.
Life and work
The NNDB account states Kellogg had no formal education after grade school, as his Adventist parents believed the world would end in their lifetimes.[3] The Kellogg brothers devised a method for processing cooked grain into flakes, introducing wheat flakes in 1894 and corn flakes in 1898.[3] Will Kellogg established his own Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906 after a dispute with his brother over adding sugar to the flakes.[3] During the Great Depression, Kellogg directed his cereal plant to work four six-hour shifts, giving more people in Battle Creek the opportunity to work.[4]
In Battle Creek, Michigan, his first business venture involved selling brooms.[5] George H. King, at the urging of James Springer White, hired Kellogg in December 1878 to manage a new broom factory in Dallas, Texas; he came back to Battle Creek in November 1879 to assist his brother John Harvey Kellogg at the sanitarium.[5] On October 6, 1951, at age 91, Kellogg passed away in Battle Creek, Michigan, due to a circulatory illness.[6]
What the cited sources add
The NNDB account notes that Kellogg's cause of death was heart failure and that his remains were cremated at Oak Hill Cemetery.[3] The NNDB account states that Kellogg established the W. K. Kellogg Foundation with a $46 million grant at the height of the Depression, instructing staff to "use the money as you please, so long as it promotes the health, happiness, and well-being of children"[3] The NNDB account reports that in his last years, Kellogg said his greatest joy came from being driven to the cereal factory and sitting in the parking lot, hearing the machinery hum and smelling the toasted grain.[3] A 2018 news article about the Kellogg family visiting Braintree, England, traces the family's origins to Philip Kellogg, who lived in Bocking in 1583.[7]
The same article notes that the ancestors of the Kellogg family are honored with a blue plaque outside 52 Notley Road, unveiled in 2016.[7]
References
- Wikipedia, "Will Keith Kellogg" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Will Keith Kellogg", www.nndb.com; "Kellogg's Corn Flakes presented in Non Famous section", 2019-07-20 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Will Keith Kellogg" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "promomagazine.com", promomagazine.com (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Will Keith Kellogg", www.nndb.com. facts only, no text reused. nndb.com
- Wikipedia, "Will Keith Kellogg" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hunnicutt, "Kellogg's Six-Hour Day", Temple University Press, 1996 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Will Keith Kellogg" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Powell, "The Original Has This Signature" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Will Keith Kellogg" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "W.K. Kellogg, 91, Dead in Michigan", The New York Times, 1951-10-06, p. 87; Markel, "The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek", Pantheon Books, August 8, 2017 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Famous Kellogg family visit Braintree to discover family history", 22 September 2018. facts only, no text reused. braintreeandwithamtimes.co.uk
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Will Keith Kellogg (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Will Keith Kellogg (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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