Reporter Mark Kellogg: Mischief Maker or Valued Investigator?

March 31 marks reporter Mark Kellogg’s date of birth. As a correspondent for the Bismarck Tribune, Kellogg accompanied General Alfred Terry’s Dakota Column into Montana Territory in 1876. He would report on the campaign to force non-treaty tribes onto reservations. All expected stories of resounding success.

Kellogg’s presence seems to be a direct contradiction to General William T. Sherman’s directive that Custer “. . . take along no newspaper men, as they always work mischief. . .” Kellogg died at the Little Bighorn.

Little Bighorn Legacy

A scouting detachment found a wide, heavy trail indicating large numbers of Indians headed toward the Little Bighorn River. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, with twelve cavalry troops, was then sent to skirt southward of where the tribes were believed to have congregated. Colonel John Gibbon’s Seventh Infantry would converge from the north.

Leaving General Terry’s main command on the Yellowstone River, Kellogg rode with Custer and his Seventh Cavalry. He remained with Custer’s five troops when the colonel divided his command for the attack (Custer’s troops had been discovered by Sioux or Cheyenne scouts and he apparently felt he must press the attack early.) Kellogg died with Custer and every man of his five troops.

What Led Kellogg to the Little Bighorn

Born March 31, 1831 in Brighton, Ontario, Canada, Kellogg lived in several U.S. cities as a child. His family finally settled in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he became a telegraph operator, first for the Northwestern Telegraph company and then the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. He supported Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election but did not enlist during the nation’s Civil War.

Rather, after marrying in 1861, Kellogg worked for the La Crosse Democrat, a partisan anti-war newspaper. He would later edit the Council Bluffs, Iowa Democrat. Seeming to shift politically, he later supported the short-lived Liberal Republican Party in 1872, opposing Grant’s reelection.

In the mid-1860’s Kellogg and a partner failed in a mercantile business, partially due to losing it in a fire. He is also reported to have played shortstop on a local baseball team. However, Kellogg’s wife died in 1867, and he left their two daughters with an aunt. He apparently struggled to support them and moved around among several jobs in Iowa, Minnesota and Dakota Territory until his death.

Records show that Kellogg worked intermittently as a reporter during that time, sometimes writing dispatches under the pen name “Frontier” for the St. Paul Dispatch. He apparently enlisted in Minnesota’s militia, joined the Freemasons and ran for the state’s legislature. However, he was dropped from the militia (possibly due to his leaving the state), expelled from the Freemasons and lost his election bid (He would also later lose a bid to hold a county position in the Bismarck area.)

The Telegraph Factor

In the early 1870’s Kellogg worked as a telegrapher for the Norther Pacific Railroad as it was being built from Duluth, MN to Bismarck, Dakota Territory. This would soon come into play, perhaps fatefully.

In February 1876 George and Libby Custer were returning to Fort Abraham Lincoln, near Bismarck. They had been on an extended leave back East. However, they found that no trains were running to Bismarck at that time due to severe winter conditions.

Libby Custer wrote in her memoir Boots and Saddles, though, that in appreciation for Custer’s military escort of their survey crews in 1873, the railroad dispatched a train for his benefit. Apparently others needed to reach Bismarck as well.

Despite its plows, the train became stuck in huge drifts, leaving it stranded somewhere on Dakota’s eastern plains. It remained there more than a week. Libby did not name Kellogg in her book, but she recorded that a telegraph key was found somewhere on the train, and a passenger managed to tap it into the line along the tracks.

The telegrapher was able to send a message that reached the fort, and Custer’s brother Tom brought a horse-drawn sleigh to rescue George and Libby. Other sources identify that telegrapher as Kellogg, stating that both Kellogg and Bismarck Tribune publisher, Clement Lounsberry, were on that train.

In March of that year the Tribune published an announcement stating its correspondent would accompany Custer’s planned expedition. That seed may have germinated during the winter train incident. All anticipated a dramatic military success.

Campaign Correspondence

Lounsberry later claimed he was to be the cavalry’s correspondent but had to step aside due to his wife’s illness. Regardless, Kellogg got the chance to “go with Custer” as he would soon write. He would send dispatches out on May 31, June 12  and June 21.

Kellogg’s second dispatch was published on June 22, the day he rode out with Custer toward the Little Bighorn. It would be prophetic, but not in the way Kellogg apparently envisioned. It would be ominous.

Kellogg’s final dispatch would be sent from the mouth of the Rosebud Creek on June 21, 1876, It was sent downriver by courier and steamboat just before he joined Custer on what would be his final foray. (More posts on that will appear in June.)

The Tangled Trader Scandal Web

An interesting coincidence, if not a connection, seems to exist among events involving both Custer and Kellogg. Late in 1874 Kellogg had published a letter under his pen name “Frontier” denouncing alleged graft by President Grant’s brother Orville. Under scrutiny in March of 1876, Orville admitted that President Grant had indeed awarded him tradership monopolies at four military posts in 1874.

However, a much larger price-gouging scheme was in place, with both soldiers and Indians suffering because of it. Secretary of War William Belknap was at the top of it and received hefty kickbacks. As commander of Fort Abraham Lincoln, Lt. Colonel Custer had begun to investigate it in 1875 after seeing his soldiers suffering beneath its burden.

By March of 1876 a congressional inquiry and impeachment were in progress, and Custer was called before them to testify. Coincidentally, an article titled “Belknap’s Anaconda” appeared on March 31 in the New York Herald. Custer was suspected of being its source; he was also suspected of aiding the paper in its investigation.

Custer lost favor with his commander-in-chief regardless, but a question arises as to whether Mark Kellogg might have been the anonymous article’s source. Likely not. A New York reporter later claimed authorship, but Custer is alleged to have fed other scandal-related information to the Herald.

Kellogg does appear connected to other information that made its way to the Herald as early as 1874. His work as a stringer was published by the paper after the fateful battle on June 25^th, and the Herald would capitalize by claiming him as its own. It did him little good, but it may have benefitted his family.

In the end, maybe Kellogg’s efforts to support his daughters paid off. In a 2017 HistoryNet story John Koster wrote that James Gordon Bennett, the New York Herald’s publisher, later gave $2,000 to help support Kellogg’s daughters and their aunt. Koster says locals later recalled that at some point Bennett also arranged a $100 monthly stipend for the aunt and gave the daughters each $5,000 at maturity.

(In an unrelated error, the story mistakenly states that Kellogg telegraphed his last dispatches. In fact, the nearest telegraph was hundreds of miles away, with no lines yet along the Yellowstone.)

Much surrounding the Little Bighorn intertwines with other events. Kellogg’s presence on the campaign ties in with more topics. More will appear in June regarding his final dispatches. How he came to be involved – and to what extent – seem to be part of the tangled, intriguing web entwining the Little Bighorn.