Theodore Preston Kellogg was born on December 7, 1844, in Bennington County, Vermont, to Henry P. Kellogg and Anne Hubbell. His father was a lawyer who owned $2,000 of real estate and $30 of personal property in 1860. Kellogg grew up and attended school in Bennington County. By 1860, however, he was living on a farm in Elk Grove, Illinois. In the spring of 1861, he applied for a place at West Point, and one writer assured President Abraham Lincoln that Kellogg was “a good mathmetician [sic] and scholar [who] can read Latin as easy as he can english.” Kellogg was “full of Patriotism, says he would be willing to lay down his life in defence of his country + shed the last drop of his blood to sustain her honour.”

 

Kellogg apparently did not receive the appointment, and he enlisted in the Union army in Chicago, Illinois, on May 24, 1861. He mustered in as a private in Company I of the 13^th Illinois Infantry later that day. The regiment took part in the Battle of Fort Donelson in early 1862 and the siege of Vicksburg the following year. In January 1862, he declared that he was “as much of a democrat as ever I did not enlist to free n-----s but to put down rebellion.”

 

He insisted that “union men should be allowed to keep their slaves & the Secesh slaves captured by the federal forces should be sold to help pay the expense of the war or set at work on the fortifications but I would never free them.” Still, he remained devoted to the Union cause, writing, “I love my country & I am pleased with her service.” The army transferred him to the 56^th Illinois Infantry on July 9, 1864, and he mustered out on August 12, 1865.

 

Kellogg began courting Sarah Draper in the early 1860s, and he corresponded with her throughout the war. In April 1865, he wrote to her, “I do love you, Sarah darling. truly, passionately, & it is the fear that through me you may sometimes know sorrow that causes unhappiness.” He married her in Chicago, Illinois, on June 26, 1867, and they had at least three children: Henry, born around 1868; Timothy, born around 1873; and William, born around 1878. The family lived in Chicago, and Kellogg worked as a laborer. In 1870, they owned $350 of personal property.

 

They moved to Elk Grove sometime in the 1870s, and Kellogg worked as a farmer there. Sarah died in Illinois on February 15, 1899, and Kellogg married Harriet Elizabeth Richardson on January 10, 1900. Their son Joseph Warren was born around 1901. Kellogg moved to Covert, New York, around 1900, and he worked as a farmer and “Capitalist” there. He died in Interlaken, New York, on July 4, 1921.

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