Spencer Kellogg

Spencer Kellogg

WNY Heritage Press

Spencer Kellogg's grandfather [Supplina Kellogg] began milling linseed oil in 1824 in the Mohawk Valley near Amsterdam, New York.

Spencer Kellogg moved to Buffalo and, at age 28, built his first linseed oil mill in 1879. By 1894, he constructed a second mill, giving him a total of 36 presses, making his the largest linseed oil plant in the U.S.

The Spencer Kellogg & Sons, Inc. company, was incorporated in 1912 with its headquarters in Buffalo. In 1940, the company operated four flaxseed crushing plants, four soybean crushing plants, one copra crushing plant in Manila, one castorbean crushing plant and one tung oil rectifying and refining plant in Hankow, China.

An excerpt from

Buffalo's Delaware Avenue: Mansions and Families

By Edward T. Dunn

Pub. by Canisius College Press, 2003

The next resident at #805 Delaware [now the 1967 Temple Beth Zion] was Spencer Kellogg, who had the Forbush house razed and replaced with a splendid red-brick Georgian mansion with Doric columns which was completed in 1905 at a cost of $500,000.

Kellogg was born in West Galway, New York, in 1851. He graduated from the Gloversville Seminary and was also privately tutored.

In 1875 he married Jane Morris, by whom he had eight children; Spencer Kellogg Jr.+ b. 10 Apr 1876, d. 19 Dec 1944 Elizabeth Miller Kellogg+ b. 15 Feb 1879 Howard Kellogg+ b. 26 Mar 1881, d. Jul 1969 Gertrude Montgomery Kellogg+ b. 12 Feb 1883 Morris Kellogg b. 27 Dec 1884, d. 15 Jan 1885 Ruth Kellogg+ b. 21 Apr 1890 Doris Kellogg+ b. 8 Feb 1892, d. 22 Jun 1988 Donald Law Kellogg+ b. 27 Jan 1894

Financial interests

After his marriage he was engaged briefly in banking in Des Moines. But he moved to Buffalo in 1879 where he founded a linseed oil business, which became Spencer Kellogg & Sons. Flax seed from which this oil is made could easily be brought from the Midwest and North Central States via the Lakes to Buffalo for processing and distribution to eastern markets.

He also became a grain elevator operator, a manufacturer of brooms and brushes, paints and varnishes, white lead, iron and steel, and vegetable oils. Kellogg & Sons became the largest of its kind in the world, with plants and offices throughout the United States and Europe.

In 1910 on the death of Colonel Barnard, owner of the Sizer mansion on Niagara Square, Spencer Kellogg & Sons bought the house, expanded it, and made it company headquarters.

At first the new #805 housed Spencer, fifty-two, his fifty-year old wife Jane, and four children: Howard twenty-four, Gertrude twenty-two, Ruth fifteen, and Dorris eleven. There were five domestics, the majority Irish girls, and in the back an Irish coachman and family. In 1952, when the Kelloggs had long decamped, a reporter recalled the glories of the mansion, not all of them gone:

Before beginning construction of the Kellogg home, architects for the firm of Green & Wicks and plaster workers from Marcott & Co., New York, interior decorators, were sent to Europe to observe various aspects of French and Italian architecture and art for adaptation to the mansion. Throughout its building only the finest materials were used. Fireplaces were of imported marble, balustrades of artistic wrought iron, lighting features of hammered bronze, wrought iron, crystal and gold, doors of solid mahogany, door knobs of cut glass; and the gold leaf ornamentation in the ceiling was very costly. Built into this one-time home are the basement theater, ... an art gallery and the beautiful music room in which more than a hundred persons can be seated without crowding.

Mr. Kellogg collected paintings and other objects of art from many distant countries. One of his favorite paintings was a Thomas Moran landscape. The gold andirons, harmonizing with the color scheme of the mahogany and gold library, came from Egypt. Carved gilded chairs of the reception hall were created in Austria. A table, topped with hand-tooled leather, is of Italian workmanship.

The art gallery is equipped with lighting designed to display paintings to advantage. Bedrooms are spacious and all bathrooms are in marble. Fixtures, including showers, are plated in gold.

The rooms of the first floor are virtually as they were when Mr. Kellogg lived there. In the reception hall, the crimson hangings and upholstery and the crimson velvet carpet have been replaced. The French blue damask covered walls of the drawing room, with its ample fireplace of cream-colored marble surmounted by a gold-framed arched mirror, are impressive. In the ivory and gold music room, the consoles of rare veined marble, selected by Mr. Kellogg, remain,

Spencer Kellogg had a summer home, "Lochevan," in Derby. After his death in 1922, son Howard, who had made this his regular home and had become executive vice-president of the family firm, became president.

Spencer Kellogg's widow remained at #805 for a few years until it was sold to the Town Club, a woman's group founded in 1926, which moved into its new quarters the next year. It had served as a private home for a mere dozen years.

• Residence: (1870 — Age: 19) Amsterdam, Montgomery, New York, United States
• Marriage to Jane Morris: (10 Apr 1875 — Age: 23)
• Residence: (1 Jun 1875 — Age: 23) Amsterdam, Montgomery, New York, USA
• Residence: (1880 — Age: 29) Buffalo, Erie, New York, USA
• Residence: (1900 — Age: 49) Evans, Erie, New York, USA
• Residence: (1905 — Age: 54) Buffalo Ward 24, Erie, New York, USA
• Residence: (1910 — Age: 59) Buffalo Ward 21, Erie, New York, USA
• Residence: (1 Jun 1915 — Age: 63) Evans, Erie, New York, United States
• Residence: (1920 — Age: 69) Buffalo Ward 25, Erie, New York, USA
• Burial: Buffalo, Erie County, New York, USA
• Residence: Buffalo, New York
  • Updated from Ancestry Genealogy via son Donald Lawrence Kellogg by SmartCopy: Dec 14 2015, 22:26:24 UTC