Kellogg, Giles Pease

GILES PEASE KELLOGG (b. c. 1825 Massachusetts; active in Petaluma, 1856-1862). Kellogg is the first photographer documented as working in Petaluma. On January 10, 1856 he established Kellogg’s Daguerrean Gallery (aka Petaluma Daguerrean Rooms) on Main Street in Petaluma, “next door to Dr. Brown’s Drug Store”. In his early advertisements, he is proclaimed to be a “Daguerrean Artist” and his daguerreotypes as “perfect likenesses”. His gallery is described as a splendid suite of rooms, with an operating room “furnished with a mammoth sky-light, arranged on the most scientific plan, which, with the latest improvements in cameras, apparatus and chemicals enables Mr. Kellogg to produce pictures of the ‘human face divine’ in a style of excellence not to be surpassed.” By May 1856, Kellogg was offering a new type of portrait to his clients, the ambrotype, which he described as a “new and most perfect method” especially appropriate “for taking true and correct pictures of children and infants”. Late in 1857 Kellogg advertised that he was now producing images with “colors beautifully blended.”

Kellogg married Millie D. Laird (1837-1863) in Sonoma, California on August 26, 1858. (The Society of California Pioneers Museum and Library owns a notable carte de visite portrait of Kellogg taken by his fellow Petaluma photographer, Brian Johnson. Its inscription is a marriage proposal to Millie.)  In April 1860, Kellogg moved his studio to Petaluma’s Phoenix Block,  and advertised it as an ambrotype gallery where he was, “…prepared to furnish shadows true to life, at a very low figure.” He also advertised that at this location, “Ambrotypes of deceased persons taken on the shortest notice.” In January 1862, Edward Payson Butler took over the studio.

Petaluma Photographic Studio: Kellogg’s Daguerrean Gallery aka Petaluma Daguerrean Rooms, Main Street, Petaluma, January 1856 - April 1860. Kellogg’s Ambrotype Galleries, Phoenix Block, Second Floor, April 1860 - January 1862.

Active in Petaluma: January 1856 to January 1862

Bibliography: Petaluma Argus, Sept. 3, 1861, p.2; Nov. 19, 1861, p.2. Petaluma Daily Morning Courier, May 2, 1904, p.3. Sonoma County Journal, January 19, 1856, p. 3; Feb. 9, 1856, p.2; May 3, 1856, p.2; Aug. 29, 1856, p.3; Jan. 2, 1857, p.2; Ja. 9, 1857, p.3; Dec. 9, 1859, p.5; Feb. 10, 1860, p.2; April 13, 1860, p.4; July 20, 1860, p.4; Jan. 17, 1862, p.2. Sonoma Democrat, December 6, 1862, p. 4, column 5. Carl Mautz, Biographies of Western Photographers, A Reference Guide to Photographers Working in the 19th Century American West, Expanded and Revised Edition, 2018, p. 142; Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West, Stanford University Press, 2000, p. 345.

Unfortunately, the PHL&M owns no portraits that can be definitively attributed to this important, early photographer; however, there are several early ambrotypes without an identified photographer which may have been created by him. You can find these portraits by typing “Kellogg” in the search bar above.