My Land Story: A Homesteading Heritage

MY LAND STORY

A Homesteading Heritage

By Tim Kellogg, ALC

In this space we continue to share an RLI member’s personal story of what land has meant to their family over the years, decades, and (in some cases) centuries. Enjoy!

The Kellogg family has been in what is now the United States since at least the 1650s, and it is a privilege for me to help carry on a rich legacy of appreciation for American land we have called home for more than three-and-a-half centuries. A good portion of that time has been on our family farm in Illinois, where last year we celebrated our 175th anniversary.

The farm where my wife Jennifer and I have a home is about an hour outside of Chicago. My brother Matt and my parents also have homes on the farm, where my dad and now Matt manage the grain and hogfarm operations. While I wasn’t drawn to raising pigs, I did feel a strong pull towards the land.

In addition to a desire to remain connected to the land and not stuck in an office, I enjoyed math, science, and art. Civil Engineering seemed a great combination of all those interests. During summers away from the University of Illinois, I ran dozers, scrapers, and other large machines for the family excavating business, building roads and subdivisions. Once I graduated, I worked for a consulting engineering firm that specialized in land development design and obtained my Professional Engineering license. A homebuilder client of the firm’s that was doing about a thousand homes per year in the Chicago market then recruited and hired me to handle land acquisition, entitlement, and development work. After the recession of 2008 hit, I started my own land consulting company and later obtained my real estate broker’s license, doing business in row-crop agricultural and distressed development ground.

At this point, I’m primarily an independent developer and entitlement consultant, but I still do several transactions as a REALTOR® each year. I have loved becoming a part of the incredible RLI family and obtaining my ALC; I consider that as an integral part of my land story that reaches back to before the founding of the United States. Joseph Kellogg (my great-times-eight grandfather) came over from Great Leighs, England. We are unsure when he came to America, but he was documented as an early settler in Farmington, Connecticut, by 1651. His great-grandson, Preserved Kellogg, was a butcher in Castleton, Vermont, fought in the Revolutionary War, and lived to the age of 93. The family continued to live in the Castleton area until my great-great-great grandfather George Washington Kellogg came to Illinois in 1835.

By the 1840s, George was in Illinois and became the first schoolteacher in Oswego. George must have been drawn to the vast open land surrounding the small town, as he purchased two quarter-sections from the U.S. government at the Land Office in Chicago for $200 ($1.25 per acre), homesteading our farm on February 18, 1846. He subsequently brought his parents from Vermont, so my daughter Tawney and son John are the eighth generation of Kelloggs to live on the farm; they also attend school in the same town where George had taught and where Jennifer now teaches.

The Illinois land that George bought was covered with tallgrass prairie. When he got to work building his house, George brought out a load of lumber and stacked it where he planned to build the home. On a return trip with another load, he had trouble finding the first one. After he finally found it, George went to the creek that runs through our farm, dug up 23 cottonwood trees, and replanted them around the area where the home and barn were to be built to better locate the farmstead from a distance. Two of those trees still remain, with one being at the end of my driveway. (See photo.)

While the original homestead house no longer exists, the original barn still stands with its hand-hewn beams and wood-peg construction, complete with my great-great grandfather Alvin’s name carved into one of the columns in capital letters. As the N is backwards, it likely was carved when he was a young boy, dating it around 1870. The barn is just across the barnyard from my home that was built by Alvin near the end of the 1800s.

Stories of people, their lives, and their involvement in historical events are my books of choice. Possibly this is due to hearing so many stories of my family that still have a local association for me, many having occurred on the land just outside my door. With this comes pride and

responsibility. I feel an obligation to uphold a legacy of service to my community and a sense of pride watching my own children grow up on the land where Alvin once played so many years ago.

This family history means that talking land is in my comfort zone. Having such a vast background in land gives me credibility, whether talking agriculture, civil engineering, or land development. I feel it provides others with a first impression that I’ve been there and done that.

It would be impossible to tell my life or professional story without land being a significant part of it. I feel truly blessed to be a part of a family with such a rich heritage that is so strongly tied to America’s land.

Tim Kellogg, ALC, his wife Jennifer, and their two children, Tawney and John, live on the Kellogg family farm an hour from downtown Chicago. Tim has had an active career as a design engineer, entitlement consultant, land developer and real estate broker, in addition to serving many organizations in leadership roles.