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    Battle Creek
    Battle Creek
    Battle Creek
    Ebook196 pages59 minutes

    Battle Creek

    By Carol Bennett and Kurt Thornton

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Founded in 1831, Battle Creek has transformed itself with a rapidly changing world-from agrarian milling community to manufacturing center to the current morph into a food health research center. For 100 years, "Cereal City" has been connected to ready-to-eat breakfast foods, home to the Post Division of General Foods, Ralston Foods, and the Kellogg Company, making it the largest cereal-producing city in the world. Visitors and residents alike have enjoyed mailing postcards of this dynamic community to friends and family all over the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateDec 7, 2009
    ISBN9781439624388
    Battle Creek
    Author

    Carol Bennett

    Carol Bennett, a reporter and actress, received her bachelor of arts from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a professional library degree from McGill University in Montreal. She was the host of a weekly television program, Modern Maturity, that aired nationally on PBS from 1986 to 1988 and for twenty years was the Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Alabama Radio Network. She has traveled extensively in Canada, where she has many relatives. She lives with her husband, architect Ralph D. Bennett, Jr., in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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      Book preview

      Battle Creek - Carol Bennett

      Collection.

      INTRODUCTION

      The settlement eventually known as Battle Creek was founded in 1831 when a group of pioneer entrepreneurs chose the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek Rivers as a location for their venture. Robert Clark, John J. Guernsey, Lucius Lyon, and Sands McCamly had all purchased land at the site, but to get controlling interest, McCamly purchased Clark’s and Lyon’s options on the property for $100 each. Guernsey sold his interest to Nathaniel Barney, an innkeeper. Barney built his first local inn, Barney’s Tavern, on the northwest riverbank near the area where the rivers came together (now the site of the closed Kellogg’s Cereal City USA).

      In 1835, McCamly hired men who had worked at digging the Erie Canal in New York State and local Native Americans to dig a one-and-a-quarter-mile-long millrace between the two rivers. The millrace used the two-foot drop between the rivers to move the rushing water (that is why it is called a millrace) to move the water wheels that powered the mills along the race.

      The mills prospered and the community grew. The Michigan Central Railroad was extended to the village in 1845, making transportation of people and manufactured goods a financial boom to the city. Factories sprang up, and the city’s location between Detroit and Chicago contributed to making the area a financial success.

      The name of Battle Creek was officially chosen for the city on December 31, 1858, when the citizens voted to become incorporated. Along with choosing incorporation, a choice on the ballet for naming the new city was up for vote. Among the possible names and number of votes cast for each choice were Peninsular City (9 votes), Wopokisco (50 votes), Calhoun City (93 votes), or Battle Creek (315 votes). On February 3, 1859, Battle Creek was officially a city, signed into law by Michigan governor Moses Wisner. The new city’s first election was held on March 7, 1859, where its first mayor, Elijah Pendill, a 47-year-old dairyman, temperance advocate, and Republican, was elected along with a city council.

      Toward the end of the 19th century, Battle Creek was becoming nationally famous with its production of threshing machines, steam pumps, and printing presses. What really put Battle Creek on the map had its beginnings in 1861 when the Seventh Day Adventist Church moved its headquarters to the city and with them, the health reform movement. In 1894, a small accident occurred that profoundly changed the city (and the world). An experiment being performed at the Seventh Day Adventist–administered Battle Creek Sanitarium went awry. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg left some of their research unfinished overnight. The resulting mistake created the process for making flaked cereal. By 1902, over 40 companies were manufacturing cereal within the city limits, attempting to capitalize on the city’s fame as the Health Capital of the Midwest to sell their product.

      About this time, rapid color printing was becoming cheap and an easy way to advertise a product, a community, an idea, or a person. That along with the perfection of cheap efficient postal service led to the successful industry of souvenir postcards. Railroad service had long since made it easy to travel almost anywhere in the country, and people wanted to send messages to friends and family members that not only passed on the message but could show the wonderful sites being visited. Battle Creek had no shortage of such sites.

      My mother, Frances Thornton, loved Battle Creek and was an avid collector of its history. When she was young, she began accumulating local postcards because they were cheap to attain and easy to store. As I grew up, I also enjoyed looking at the images and learning about this wonderful city’s history. At that time (the late 1960s and early 1970s) there were very few illustrated local history books and virtually no video tapes, DVDs, or computer search engines that could show you the rich heritage of this community. By the time I was in junior high school, I accompanied mom to garage sales, flea markets, antique auctions, and anywhere else we might find a postcard we had never seen before. When I was in high school, she had created a network of friends, antique dealers, and even the local Battle Creek gas repairman who would trade cards and other historic items at our dining room table. Not only did I get to see many images of historic Battle Creek, but also I listened to the stories told by many of her heritage dealers and authors, who included John Buchmeier (History of the Battle Creek Federal Center), Mary Butler (Heritage Magazine), and Berenice Lowe (Tales of Battle Creek). I acquired a lot of local history at my mother’s side. As I said in my first book, Battle Creek, in the Images of America series produced by Arcadia Publishing, our house on Webber Street may not have been an archival repository, but I would be hard-pressed to say that mom’s collection was not thorough. The Frances Thornton Collection of Battle Creek postcards became one of the largest in the country. It has been a wonderful resource for this and my other Arcadia books.

      We did the best we could researching information about the images we are displaying. We apologize for any errors and welcome comments and/or corrections so we can get it right in the future.

      —Kurt Thornton

      Coauthors Kurt Thornton and Carol Bennett are surrounded by some of the thousands of postcards they had fun sorting through for this book.

      One

      BUSINESS, BREAKFAST, AND INDUSTRY

      This bird’s-eye view of downtown Battle Creek is from the roof of the Masonic temple, looking west. The image from the second decade of the 20th century shows, from left to right, the Post Building, the Post Tavern, the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the Ward Building, Battle Creek

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