John's College Days at University of Michigan

From the title of this post you might get the idea that John Webb Kellogg was a normal college kid with some financial backing from his family.  He was not, as you'll see in my book, Pieces of a Life. 

In his own words, "When I was the proper age for college, there was no money to send me, nor was there any blood relative to advise of the merit of going to college.  As you will see from a rather luxurious childhood, I was dropped to poverty very fast.  At the time, I thought that Fate had played me a dirty trick."

In this picture taken in 1922, John is sailing to Put-In Bay near Belle Isle Casino in Detroit where he worked long hours in the summers. He always had one or two jobs during the school year as well, determined to save money as well as put himself through college.

Where were his parents?  Now that's an interesting story, but most of it is for another time.  His mother, Esther Clara Webb, was 18 in 1897 when she married 44-year-old Charles Henry Kellogg, whose wife had died.  Charles and his father were both engineers who built bridges all over the Northeast.  They were considered well-fixed financially.  

 When Charles died at about 60 in 1913, young John was thrust onto a difficult, rocky path.  His mother sold the 16-room house in Lancaster, New York, fired the 2 servants and rented a boarding house that she ran in much larger Buffalo.  Though she remarried in 1915,  she and Guy Wood struggled to stay afloat.