It's April so it's time for our members to help us blog through the 2020 A-Z Blogging Challenge. Our chosen theme this year is Employment, also the topic of our Shared Endeavour where our members are encouraged to research employment within their one-place study. Today's entry is from Brenda Turner.

Hiram Johnson Kellogg is a gent I have written about here before.

Hiram Kellogg was born in October 1803 in Castleton, Rutland County, Vermont, about 125 miles from the Canadian border, directly north of there. It is likely he was drawn to Canada by the punitive taxes levied in the United States in the years following the Revolution to pay for the cost of the Revolution itself, which took what became the United Sates of America forever from the grasp of Great Britain.

For whatever reason he came to Canada, he was undoubtedly here in 1830, when he married Martha Harris, born in England, who had come to the area then known as West Templeton, in Lower Canada, (now Quebec). She was age 15 at the time when they married, while he was 27.

This couple settled there, and twelve years later in the 1842 census of Canada East (that is, closer to the mouth of the St Lawrence River emptying into the Atlantic Ocean) the family has 10 members (see the column on the far right), which would have included any hired farm labourers, and their families. During this period, the Township of West Templeton was just being established and cleared for farming. The first land grants in the area started in about 1826. None have been located for Hiram Kellogg, but that is not to say that no such land grant had been made.

1842 census of Canada East
1842 census of Canada East

Note that just four families away from Hiram Kellogg’s family are the Samuel Harris family. Hiram had not had for to go far to find a wife in Martha Harris, daughter of that Samuel. At this time, there were very few actual roads serving the community. In this census, Hiram and his father in law were both reported to be farmers.

In the next few censuses, Hiram was always described as a farmer, until in later years, Hiram appeared to ….. ahem …… branch out. In the 26 June 1857 issue of the Ottawa Citizen, Hiram inserted an ad claiming to be Professor Kellogg, and extolling the benefits of Professor Kellogg’s Life Preserving Vegetable Compound. This was cordially recommended by local residents, including this writer’s great grandfather, Hugh Turner, to cure fever, puking and purging, and small pox. According to this ad, a drunk could be made sober in one half hour by swallowing two doses, and it was excellent on all horseflesh and other beasts.

Uh huh

In the 1871 directory of Quebec, in the village of Templeton, Hiram Kellogg had moved on. He was now described as a phrenologist, a specialist in measuring bumps in the skull and predicting character traits as a result. Please see the Wikipedia definition of phrenology which follows the directory.

1871 directory of Quebec
1871 directory of Quebec

Phrenology (from Ancient Greek φρήν (phrēn), meaning 'mind', and λόγος (logos), meaning 'knowledge') is a pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.[1][2] It is based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules.[3] Although both of those ideas have a basis in reality, phrenology extrapolated beyond empirical knowledge in a way that departed from science.[1][4] The central phrenological notion that measuring the contour of the skull can predict personality traits is discredited by empirical research.[5] Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796,[6] the discipline was influential in the 19th century, especially from about 1810 until 1840. The principal British centre for phrenology was Edinburgh, where the Edinburgh Phrenological Society was established in 1820. Wikipedia

The discipline of phrenology may have been influential until about 1840, but time moved more slowly in the little community of West Templeton Quebec. Hiram passed away quietly in 1877 and is buried in my special place, the West Templeton Cemetery, along with one of his sons.

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