When The Thrill Is Gone

As usual, I was up at the crack of dawn and on the computer "doing" genealogy.  Ya know, there oughta be a verb for what I do, for what a lot of people do.  Why isn't there one?  Oh, I know, "research".  But that's dull, isn't it?  And implies tedium and spectacles. Whereas what I do is immerse myself in records and names and photos and stuff with great joy and abandon!  It's hardly ever tedious (I'd be lying if I said it wasn't.  I just got done looking at the entire population of St Clair county, Michigan in census records for 1840.  That got to be tedious.) and almost always exciting.

Anyway, I was wondering how Emilene Jane Kellogg came to be living in Port Huron in St Clair county.  She was married there in 1845.  She had stated in many census records that she was born around 1824 here in Michigan.  That's awful early.  Maybe not too early for the lowest part of Michigan, the Detroit and surrounding areas, but up further?  That was woods and bears and Indians in the 1820's.  Of course Port Huron, being on the western shore of Lake Huron, would be a bit more settled, I think, being a port and all.  Waterways were the main transportation highways before there were roads.  So I was looking at the 1840 census records of St Clair county and I found...a Kellogg.  Benjamin Kellogg.  He was in the village of St Clair.  There was one male aged 40 through 49.  That was him.  Head of house.  Also in the household were: 1 female under 5, 2 females 5 thru 9, 1 female 10 thru 14, and 1 female 30 thru 39.  That would be his wife, I'm thinking.  Four females under 15.  That could easily fit my Emily Jane.  But her father's listed as John Kellogg on her death certificate, and someone else has a female in their public tree on ancestry, having Emily as her sister, and her death certificate says her father's Palmer Kellogg.  Could this Benjamin be a relation of Palmer? Who is John Kellogg?

I haven't found Benjamin Kellogg in St Clair county after 1840.  I just have to keep digging.