Kellogg, Ella Ervilla (1853-1920)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Born Ella Ervilla Eaton on 7 April 1853 in Alfred, New York and best known as the wife of John Harvey Kellogg, Ella Ervilla Kellogg was a pioneering dietician: Superintendent of the Sanitarium School of Cookery and of the Bay View Assembly School of Cookery, and Chairman of the World's Fair Committee on Food Supplies, for Michigan. Like her husband, she was a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church. She was actively involved in such social justice issues as women's suffrage and women's rights through the Federation of Women's Clubs, and the National Congress of Mothers; Temperance as a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and as its national superintendent of the Department of Hygiene in 1882 and associate superintendent of the Social Purity department [three years later; and she was a charter member of the Michigan Woman's Press Association. Ella Kellogg co-founded and managed the Haskell Home for Orphan Children, and with her husband adopted several children. Like John Harvey Kellogg, she was primarily interested  in dietetics and vegan cooking more than ethical veganism. From 1884, she oversaw the activities of the “Sanitarium Experimental Kitchen” at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which evolved into a distinct School of Domestic Economy. She died on 14 June 1920 in Battle Creek, Michigan.

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