Partner Annie M. Alexander
Queer Places:
627 15th St, Oakland, CA 94612
Grizzly Island Wildlife Area, 2548 Grizzly Island Rd, Suisun City, CA 94585
Mountain View Cemetery
Oakland, Alameda County, California, USA
Louise Kellogg (August
27, 1879 - December 12, 1967) was for more than half a century an explorer and collector of specimens for
the University of California. She was the cousin of Martin Kellogg, a distinguished Professor of Latin and former UC President.
She was the daughter of Charles Winslow Kellogg (1839–1913) and Anita Root Flint (1840–1922). She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1901. She loved working with her hands, but as was typical for a young woman of wealth and good social standing, her university degree was in classics, and she became a school teacher soon after graduation. In the summer of 1908 she met Annie Montague Alexander and went on field work for the first time. They went on to spend the next 42 years together. In 1908, following graduate study in zoology and other scientific fields, she joined Alexander, another Oakland socialite, in a field trip to Alaska during which they gathered scientific specimens for the university. The two women explored wilderness areas from Alaska to the southern tip of Baja California. They brought back a total of 17.851 plant specimens and 6.744 small animals, reptiles and fossils of animal life during their years of exploration. Both women were rescued from a snowbound cabin in the mountains of Inyo County in 1937. They had headquartered in the cabin during a winter field trip, but had run out of food and suffered exposure.
Alexander and Kellogg were, by all accounts, devoted to each other, forming an indefatigable team and a harmonious partnership. They maintained separate residences in Oakland, but in 1911 bought, developed, and began operating a farm in Suisun on Grizzly Island in the Sacramento River Delta, where they lived part of the year, quite happily, in considerable isolation. Their farm was a serious working venture and their asparagus, among other products, became nationally known (the farm is now part of a wildlife refuge). The two women also maintained a herd of milking shorthorn cattle. They celebrated Alexander's 80th birthday in 1947 with a motor exploration of Baja California. Alexander died in 1949.
Alexander and Kellogg were extremely discreet about their personal lives. Alexander’s biographer Barbara Stein likened their relationship to what, in the late 19th century, was sometimes described as “romantic friendship” between two women. “…with or without sex, romantic friendships generally involved lives of love, shared values and experiences and, often, hard work. Alexander and Kellogg maintained such a relationship.” Stein also interviewed several former UC staff members who knew the two women in their later years. She writes “one former Museum of Vertebrate Zoology employee said simply, “(Alexander) was a lesbian. We didn’t talk about such things in those days. Her friend was Louise Kellogg and they did everything together to the end of their lives. They were both interested in natural history. It was a very happy relationship I think.”
She was a member of the First Congregational Church of Oakland. Kellogg lived at 627 15th St, Oakland, for manv years prior to entering a Berkeley sanitarium sometime before her death. She died in Berkeley, California, on December 12, 1967.
My published books:
