On March 14, 1825, two white men, members of a surveying party, and two Indians fought a desperate battle on the bank of a small river in southern Michigan. Because of the battle, the surveyors dubbed the stream Battle Creek, thereby providing the world’s Health City with a name.

Two or three years later, a settlement sprang up at the confluence of Battle Creek with the Kalamazoo River, near the center of the present city. At first, the settlement was called Milton, the original name of the township. When the first postmaster was appointed on May 7, 1832, the name was changed to Garnsey, after the man who entered the land on which the city was established. Within a few years the settlement became Battle Creek.

The city’s settlers, hardy pioneers from New York state, had a difficult time of it the first few years. In 1832 there was a severe epidemic of cholera. Many died in the vicinity. Malaria, also was so rife that nearly everyone had it.

Battle Creek’s pioneers found food difficult to obtain. There were no mills to grind their grain and the hogs were so thin they were known as “wind splinters.” Farming was heart-breaking.

The city had its first church in 1832 when the Methodists organized. There was mail service as early as 1835, the postage being 25 cents a letter. Although the area was infested with Indians, the settlers experienced little violence from them. The Indians were nuisances, however, as they continually begged for food and other articles.

Life for the pioneers was not all hardship. History records that they held frequent husking and quilting bees and regular parties. The Fourth of July was often observed with a celebration. One historian notes that in 1835 Judge Sands McCamly, a pioneer leader, marked Independence day with a feast, and apparently there was plenty to eat for after the judge’s white guests were fed, there was food left for several hundred Indians.

In 1859, a charter was drawn up for the incorporation of the settlement as a village. An interesting sidelight on this event was the effort of Erastus Hussey, one of the leaders of the village, to have its name changed from Battle Creek to Waupakisca. An old Indian told Hussey that the Indians named the region Waupakisco. Hussey argued that this name would be more beautiful and musical, but the residents felt otherwise.

Erastus Hussey gained national prominence in the anti-slavery days before the Civil war, when Battle Creek played an important part as a station on the “underground railroad.” Of the 30,000 slaves successfully handled by this method, about 1,000 passed through Battle Creek. Hussey, a Quaker merchant and later mayor of the city, was an ardent abolitionist and took over the task of transporting the slaves through the city. Hussey was also editor of the Liberty Press, organ. of the abolitionists of Michigan, a state representative, state senator, and one of the founders of the republican party. He presided over the Free Soil Convention at Jackson in 1854, out of which the G.O.P. grew, arid was a member of the committee which drew up the party’s first platform.. In 1860 he had the satisfaction of being a delegate to the convention in Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.

In the intervening years, Battle Creek has developed rapidly. The Seventh-day Adventists established a college in 1874. Then Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, later to become the outstanding proponent of vegetarianism and one of the nation’s leading physicians, founded the Sanitarium. Two of the world’s largest cereal companies were established by the late C. W. Post and W. K. Kellogg. The Sanitarium and cereal factories today have made Battle Creek widely known as the Health and Food City of the world.

From a population of 26,000 at the turn of the century, the city proper now has some 45,000 residents. It boasts a wide diversity of industries, an outstanding school system and Battle Creek college. Often called the best known city of its size in the world, Battle Creek truly lives up to this reputations.

Michigan Pioneers, The first One Hundred years of Statehood, transcribed by K. L. Ortman