Merritt Gardner Kellogg (28 March 1832 – December 20 1921) was a

Seventh-day Adventist The Seventh-day Adventist Church is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath, and ...

(SDA) carpenter, missionary, pastor and doctor who worked in Northern California, the South Pacific, and Australia. He designed and built several medical facilities. Kellogg was involved in the controversy about which day should be observed as the Sabbath on Tonga, which lies east of the 180° meridian but west of the International Date Line.

Early years

Merritt Gardner Kellogg was born in Hadley, Massachusetts on the Connecticut River on 28 March 1832. He attended the Battle Creek Sabbath School. He converted to Seventh-day Adventism at the age of twenty. Kellogg was the half-brother of

John Harvey Kellogg John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was an American medical doctor, nutritionist, inventor, health activist, eugenicist, and businessman. He was the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. The ...

. He married Louisa Rawson (1832–94) and they had a child Charles Merritt Kellogg (1856–89). The Kelloggs made the westward journey to California in 1859, where they were probably the first Seventh-day Adventists in the state. In 1861 Kellogg gave a series of Bible lectures in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

in which he converted fourteen people. In 1867 he returned east to

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

to take a short course in medicine at Trall's Hygieo-Thereapeutic College. During his return journey to California he attended the SDA General Conference session on 1868 and asked that the church send evangelists to the West Coast. Back in California he assisted the evangelists John Loughborough and Daniel Bourdeau, mostly talking on topics related to health. During a smallpox epidemic in 1870 he gave water treatments and diet to his patients, of whom ten out of eleven survived. This earned him a high reputation. In the summer of 1877 Kellogg was asked to help look after patients at a San Francisco hydrotherapy center in exchange for room and board. The owner, Barlow J. Smith, sold out after five months and opened a retreat in Rutherford, in the

Napa Valley Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) located in Napa County in California's Wine Country. It was established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) on January 27, 1981. Napa Valley is considered one of the premier ...

. He invited Kellogg to come to Rutherford as a house physician. A patient there encouraged Kellogg to establish his own health resort, and helped arrange investors. Kellog began work on a site near

St. Helena, California St. Helena ( ; Wappo language, Wappo: ''Anakotanoma'') is a city in Napa County, California, Napa County, in the Wine Country of California. Located in the North Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the ...

. Ellen G. White came to inspect the property, and endorsed the decision. The road and building were completed by the end of May 1878 and the first patients arrived on 7 June 1878. The health center was an immediate success. Kellogg left when well-trained doctors arrived. The Rural Health Retreat later became the St. Helena Hospital.

South Pacific

In 1893 Kellogg was sent as a medical missionary to the South Pacific in the second voyage of the ''

Pitcairn The Pitcairn Islands (; Pitkern: '), officially the Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands, is a group of four volcanic islands in the southern Pacific Ocean that form the sole British Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean. The four is ...

''. The ship carried books giving practical medical advice, which would be sold, and Kellogg would give lectures and treatments at the ship's places of call. The ship sailed from San Francisco on 17 January 1893 and reached

on 19 February 1893. She went on to

Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Austra ...

Huahine Huahine is an island located among the Society Islands, in French Polynesia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Leeward Islands group ''(Îles sous le Vent).'' At the 2017 census it had a population of 6,075. ...

and

Raiatea Raiatea or Ra'iatea ( Tahitian: ''Ra‘iātea'') is the second largest of the Society Islands, after Tahiti, in French Polynesia. The island is widely regarded as the "centre" of the eastern islands in ancient Polynesia and it is likely that the ...

Islands. The ''Pitcairn'' stopped at Rurutu Island,

Mangaia Mangaia (traditionally known as A'ua'u Enua, which means ''terraced'') is the most southerly of the Cook Islands and the second largest, after Rarotonga. It is a roughly circular island, with an area of , from Rarotonga. Originally heavily popul ...

Island, Rarotonga and

Niue Niue (, ; niu, Niuē) is an island country in the South Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Zealand. Niue's land area is about and its population, predominantly Polynesian, was about 1,600 in 2016. Niue is located in a triangle between Tong ...

Island. Kellogg treated many sick people at each island. At Niue Kellogg observed that Christianity had been a corrupting influence. Spies reported misdemeanors to judges, who imposed a fine that was split between the judge and the spy. Kellogg wrote, "The result of this system is to cause the people to fear the law instead of fearing God, and as they have but a very dim idea of the object and power of the gospel, they learn to practice deceit so as to avoid detection and punishment." The ''Pitcairn'' bypassed Vavaʻu Island, Tonga, where there was a measles epidemic, to avoid being quarantined. She sailed via Fiji and Norfolk Island to New Zealand. Kellogg stayed in Australia for a while, where he made a second marriage to a woman from Broken Hill, New South Wales. His wife was Eleanor Kathleen Nolan (1874–1919). They had two children, Muriel and Merritt. Kellogg was considered for an exploratory journey along the coast of Australia and on to New Caledonia in 1894, but it was decided later that year that New Caledonia was "not very promising". He returned to the South Pacific with his wife, and reached

Apia Apia () is the capital and largest city of Samoa, as well as the nation's only city. It is located on the central north coast of Upolu, Samoa's second-largest island. Apia falls within the political district (''itūmālō'') of Tuamasaga. ...

Western Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands ( Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands ( Manono and Apolima); ...

in 1896. There he helped Dr. Frederick Braucht build a two-story sanitarium inland from the beachfront. This was the first such institution in the South Pacific. The ''Pitcairn'' found Kellog and his wife on Samoa when it visited on its fifth voyage in 1896. In September 1897 Kellogg and his wife Eleanor Nolan Kellogg came to

Tongatapu Tongatapu is the main island of Tonga and the site of its capital, Nukualofa. It is located in Tonga's southern island group, to which it gives its name, and is the country's most populous island, with 74,611 residents (2016), 70.5% of the nation ...

, the main island in Tonga, to assist with the medical work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church of Tonga. He built a timber home at Magaia that was long used as the home of the mission superintendent. In Tonga Kellogg found difficulty earning a living as a doctor, in part due to competition from a government doctor who did not charge for his services. His son Merritt Jr. was born in

Nukuʻalofa Nukualofa (; ) is the capital and largest city of Tonga. It is located on the north coast of the island of Tongatapu, in the country's southernmost island group. History First western records of Nukualofa On 10 June 1777, British captain Jam ...

in 1899.

International Date Line controversy

Kellogg and fellow-missionaries Edwin Butz and Edward Hilliard debated which was the correct day to observe the Sabbath in Tonga. The practice on board the ''Pitcairn'' had been to change days at the 180° meridian. Islands such as Samoa and Tonga were well to the east of this line, so the missionaries observed the Sabbath on the day sequence of the Western Hemisphere. However, the Tonga islands used the same days as New Zealand and Australia, so the missionaries were observing the seventh-day Sabbath on the day the secular authorities called Sunday. The tract by Adventist John N. Andrews called ''The Definitive Seventh Day'' (1871) recommended using a Bering Strait date line. If this line were taken as the IDL, the Tonga Adventists were celebrating the Sabbath on the wrong day. However, an international conference in 1884 had established the International Date Line (IDL) at 180° while allowing for local adjustments. The Tonga missionaries sent letters to church leaders in Tahiti, Australia and the US asking for advice, and even asked Ellen G. White for her opinion. Replies were contradictory. It was not until 1901 that White sent a letter to Kellogg in which she ruled decisively in favor of the 180° meridien.

Later years

The Kelloggs transferred to Australia in May 1900. They settled in Sydney, where Kellogg drew up the plans for the

Wahroonga Wahroonga is a suburb in the Upper North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, 18 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government areas of Ku-ring-gai Council and Hornsby Shire. ...

Sanitarium, and in 1901 supervised its construction. This is now the Sydney Adventist Hospital. Kellogg returned to California in 1903 and due to poor health lived in retirement. He was suffering from hearing and vision problems. He lived the last nineteen years of his life in

Healdsburg, California Healdsburg is a city located in Sonoma County, in California's Wine Country. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 11,254. Owing to its three most important wine-producing regions (the Russian River, Dry Creek, and Alexander Vall ...

. Kellogg was the older brother, or half-brother, of Dr.

, who was expelled from the

Battle Creek Battle Creek is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan, in northwest Calhoun County, at the confluence of the Kalamazoo and Battle Creek rivers. It is the principal city of the Battle Creek, Michigan Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which en ...

church on suspicion of unorthodox views and suspect practices at his sanitarium. Kellogg defended his brother in a 33-page essay he wrote in 1908. Merritt Gardner Kellogg died in 1921.

References