Kellogg, Louise

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KELLOGG, Louise

Born 12 May 1862, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; died 11 July 1942, Madison, Wisconsin

Daughter of Amherst W. and Mary Phelps Kellogg

A historian and editor, Louise Kellogg served for nearly 40 years as a researcher and executive for the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Her focus of concern was the Northwest through the Revolutionary War era. Kellogg's earliest work was The American Colonial Charter (1903), for which she received the Justin Winsor Prize of the American Historical Association. She served first as editorial assistant to Reuben Gold Thwaites, executive director of the Wisconsin Society; together they edited three volumes from the Lyman Coleman Draper Collection.

After Thwaite's death, Kellogg continued the editing of the Draper Collection and published Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio, 1778-1779 (1916) and Frontier Retreat on the Upper Ohio, 1779-1781 (1917, reissued 1993). In the introductions to these two volumes she reveals herself to be a historian writing with clarity and force, as well as an editor of high scholarly ability. She shows keen insight into the mixture of motives on both sides and incisively analyzes the factors that brought the British and the revolutionists into conflict. She saw the 15 crucial months from May 1778 to July 1779 as "the most momentous events of the Revolution in the West." In Frontier Retreat on the Upper Ohio, 1779-1781, she portrays with sympathy "the most critical years of the Revolution" in the West and East alike.

A third major editing work by Kellogg was Early Narratives of the Northwest, 1634-1699 (1911, reissued and recorded in 1987), in J. Franklin Jameson's Original Narratives of Early American History series. Kellogg's introductions are written in a fluid and dramatic style, and she shows keen appreciation of the role of French explorers, missionaries, and Canadian recruits.

In The French Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwest (1925), Kellogg's major work as a historian, she concentrates on the interaction of the French and Native Americans in the Northwest, arguing that the history of the Native Americans "forms the warp of the story, of which the coming of the French forms the woof." A major purpose of her work is to reassess the impact of the French missionaries; her rereading of original sources convinced her that they had received an undue share of credit for "opening the West to civilization." The real impact upon the Native Americans, she argues, came through the traders. As a Native American acquired new needs from the traders, he "lost the proud independence of a son of the forest." Although she devotes half the book to the 18th-century experience, her real focus is the 17th-century world. She does not portray in depth the fall of New France.

In The British Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwest (1935), Kellogg argues that British domination in the area continued from 1761 to 1816. Although there was only one two-year period (1761-63) during which a British army occupied a Wisconsin post, a British regime did in fact exist. Kellogg defines it as a "social system" built around "the regime of the fur trade." She analyzes with skill the ways in which Britain nullified the terms of the Treaty of Ghent and how they later circumvented Jay's treaty.

As a historian, Kellogg had a firm grasp of the long-range issues and was insightful in her judgements. She wrote easily and with a sense of drama. Although at times her phrasing tended toward extravagance, on the whole she was even-handed and balanced in her portrayals. This evenness gave particular strength to her handling of the problems the Native Americans encountered from their exposure to French culture. As an editor and as a historian in her own right, Kellogg provided a masterly treatment of her chosen area of concern: the Northwest, and Wisconsin in particular.

Other Works:

The Fox Indians During the French Regime (1908). Organization, Boundaries, and Names of Wisconsin Counties (1910). Remains of a French Post near Trepealeau (1915). The Tercentennial of the Discovery of Wisconsin (1934). Report of the Daniel Boone Bicentennial Commission to the 1936 General Assembly of Kentucky (1936).

Bibliography:

Cole, H. E., Stagecoach and Tavern Tales of the Old Northwest (reissue, 1997). Nettels, C., Louise P. Kellogg (Ms. in University of Wisconsin Archives).