In the beginning, when pioneer land speculator Sands McCamly stood at the confluence of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo rivers in 1831, he knew he had found an ideal location for a settlement. Other pioneering families, included many Quakers from upper New York state who also agreed on the ideal location. By the 1840s, the village, then known as Milton, was thriving and growing rapidly as a grain, flour and saw mill center for area farmers. The village changed its name to Battle Creek and incorporated as a town in 1850.

With the coming of the railroad, the fast-growing local industries found national markets. Harvey Kellogg with his brother Will, created cereals from around the world . A standard breakfast then was eggs and meat eaten by the well off, while the poor ate porridge, farina, gruel, and other boiled grains. John and Will eventually argued over the addition of sugar to the cereals and ultimately Will started his own company called the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. According to history, they never spoke to each other again. John then formed the Battle Creek Food Company to develop and market soy products. A patient of John's, C.W. Post, would eventually start his own dry cereal company selling a rival brand of corn flakes.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg gained fame while working at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, run on the Seventh-day Adventist principle who believed in a vegetarian diet and a regimen of exercise. The distinction of inventing the concept of dry breakfast cereal belongs to Dr. James Caleb Jackson who created the first dry breakfast cereal which he called "Granula".

Dr. Kellogg went to the Battle Creek public school system, then attended the Michigan State Normal School Eastern Michigan University, and finally Medical College at Bellevue Hospital. He graduated with a medical degree. He married Ella Ervilla Eaton of Alfred Center, New York. They did not have any children of their own, but raised over forty children, legally adopting seven of them.