Special Collections & Archives Lyman B. Kellogg

"I walked up to Emporia from Mr. Morse's the morning of that opening, timing it so that I should get to the school house not later nor earlier than 9 o'clock.... I reached the school room at one minute to nine, and found there a small group of students, mostly girls.... I immediately called the school to order by rapping gently on the table with my pocket knife." - From the memoirs of L. B. Kellogg, on the first day of class at KSN, February 15, 1865

L. B. Kellogg was the first teacher and the first president of the Kansas State Normal School, Emporia. Born on September 28, 1841, in Lorain County, Ohio, he was selected to head KSN after graduating from Illinois State Normal in 1864. On February 15, 1865, a few weeks after arriving in Emporia by stage coach, Kellogg opened the first class of 18 students with the Lord's Prayer and a reading of the Parable of the Sower.

Kellogg left KSN in 1871 to pursue a career in law and politics. He was elected as a Republican to the Kansas House of Representatives and the Kansas Senate, and in 1889 he was elected Kansas attorney general. In 1891 he returned to Emporia to continue his law practice. Kellogg served as KSN regent from 1899 to 1907.

Kellogg married Abbie Horner in Emporia in 1867. They had two children before her death in 1873. In 1878, Kellogg married Jennie Mitchell, which whom he had three more children. Jennie became the first woman to be certified to practice law in Kansas. She died in 1911. L. B. Kellogg died on October 8, 1918, and was buried in Maplewood Cemetery, Emporia.

Vernon Lyman Kellogg, one of Lyman Beecher's sons, was a boyhood friend of William Allen White in Emporia, and became a noted entomologist at Stanford University. The author of over 30 books and over 300 articles, Vernon Kellogg worked under Herbert Hoover in Belgian war relief during World War I. He received the highest civilian decorations of the Belgian, Polish, and French governments for his wartime efforts. After the war, Kellogg became the first permanent head of the National Research Council. Here he continued to be a leader in scientific research, and in many public issues and controversies related to the sciences, including Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.