Belle Kellogg Towne

Isabella Electa "Belle" Kellogg was born in Sylvania, Wisconsin, on June 1, 1844. She was the daughter of Seth H. and Electa S. Kellogg.

In the 1880s Belle Kellogg Towne was asked to take charge of the various young people's papers published by the David C. Cook Publishing Company, of Chicago. There she found a wide field, not only for her literary gift, but executive ability. The Young People's Weekly, the most noted of the periodicals published by that firm, was ranked among the foremost of religious papers for the young.

Towne read the numerous manuscripts contributed for all the papers in her hands, and, although charitable to the young or obscure author, she had no sympathy with a writer who had no talent, or with one who had talent, but used it unworthily or in a slipshod manner. All her business correspondence and original composition she dictated to a stenographer, and she made large use of the phonograph in her literary work. She wrote much and well. She was one of the rare examples of a successful author who was an equally successful editor.

• Around the Ranch (1883)
• On the Mountain Top (1904)
• Snowflakes and Heartaches (1912)
• The Transformation of Job, and the Taking in of Martha Matilda, with Frederick Vining Fisher

Belle Kellogg began at an early age to display literary talent, but it was not until her marriage with Prof. Thomas Martin Towne (1835-1912), of Chicago, Illinois, a well-known musical composer, that she was induced to embrace pen-work as a vocation.

She died in 1923 and is buried with her husband and son, Walter Washburn Towne (1868-1941), at Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago.