Kellogg, William P.

Born: 1830-12-08 Vermont

Died: 1918-08-10 Washington, DC

Flourished: 1853 to 1861 Canton, Illinois

William P. Kellogg, attorney and public official, was born in Orwell, Vermont, and educated at Norwich University in his native state. He moved with his family to Peoria County, Illinois in 1848, where he taught school and read law. After qualifying at the bar in 1853 he began a legal practice in Canton, and about this time first met Abraham Lincoln. Politically, Kellogg was a Republican, and he ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois House of Representatives in 1856. He represented Fulton County at the 1856 Illinois Anti-Nebraska Convention, and the 1858 and 1860 Illinois Republican conventions. Kellogg was named a presidential elector for Lincoln in the election of 1860. In the spring of 1861 President Lincoln appointed Kellogg chief justice of the Nebraska Territory, but he held the position only a few months before returning to Illinois to form and lead the Seventh Illinois Volunteer Cavalry. Kellogg rose to the rank of brigadier general while serving in Missouri during the Civil War, but resigned in less than a year due to his health. In April of 1865, Lincoln appointed Kellogg U.S. collector of customs at New Orleans, in one of his final acts as president; the appointment was confirmed under President Andrew Johnson the following January. Kellogg continued to be active in Republican politics in Louisiana during Reconstruction, serving in the U.S. Senate, as governor of the state, and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, but was viewed negatively by his opponents as a carpet-bagger. He married Mary Ellen Wills in 1865.

Michael Perman, “Kellogg, William Pitt,” American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 12:509-10; Ella Lonn, “Kellogg, William Pitt,” Dictionary of American Biography, ed. by Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), 10:305-6; Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 1319; Paul M. Angle, ed., “The Recollections of William Pitt Kellogg,” The Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 3 (September 1945), 319-39; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Peoria County, IL, 296; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 June 1858, 2:3; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Canton, Fulton County, IL, 4; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Fulton County, 6 June 1865, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887), 14:488, 508; Gravestone, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA.